William Boyd Dawkins

“ It will be necessary before we examine the group of caves used by man in prehistoric times, to point out the important difference in the measurement of time within and beyond the borders of history. When we speak, for example, of the date of the Norman Conquest, we imply that we can ascertain by historical records, not merely that it succeeded the invasion of Britain by the English or Danes, and happened before our own time, but that the interval which separates it from those events can be accurately measured by the unit of years. ”

“ It is a singular fact that no fissures or caves should, with the above exception, contain the remains of animals of a date before the Pleistocene age. There can be but little doubt that they were used as places of shelter in all ages, and they must have entombed the remains of the animals that fell into them, or were swept into them by the streams. Caves there must have been long before, and the Eocene Palæotheres, and Anoplotheres met their death in the open pit-falls, just as the sheep and cattle do at the present time. ”

“ At the frontier of history, in each country, we find that the dwellers were acquainted with the use of iron, and had found it to be the most convenient material for the manufacture of cutting weapons and implements. Before this the voice of tradition points out that bronze was the only material used for these purposes, and stone before bronze. These three stages of human culture, or the ages of iron, bronze, and stone, have been fully verified by investigations which have been made in various parts of Europe, into the prehistoric habitations and burial-places of man. ”

“ We have seen in the fifth and sixth chapters that the prehistoric caves which are so unimportant in the ages of bronze and iron, were used in the neolithic age throughout western Europe both for habitation and burial, and that they therefore offer us most valuable materials for working out the ethnology of Europe at that remote time. The two races of men, the remains of which they contain, are represented by the modern Basque and Berber on the one hand, and on the other by the Celt, and in Russia and Germany by the cognate Finn, Sclave, and Wend. ”

“ The Evidence of the Mammalia as to Climate. In the last three chapters we have seen that the cave-mammalia throw great light on the pleistocene geography of Europe, and that there is reason for the belief that the land surface then extended northwards and westwards, so as to include Ireland; and southwards to join Africa, in the direction of Sicily, Malta, and Gibraltar. We must now pass on to the consideration of the climate on this great continental area, which would allow of so large and varied a fauna existing in our quarter of the world. ”

“ Falconer well remarked that the origines of mankind are to be sought, not in Europe, but in the tropical regions, probably of Asia. To these we have no clue in the present stage of the inquiry. The higher apes are represented in the European meiocene and pleiocene strata, by extinct forms uniting in some cases the characters of different living species, but they do not show any tendency to assume human characters. It must indeed be allowed, that the study of fossil remains throws as little light as the documents of history on the relation of man to the lower animals. ”

“ The rarity of the remains of the animals may be explained by the fact of these tombs never having been used as dwellings, while their abundance in the caves may be accounted for by the latter having been inhabited by man, and thus the idea of the dead resting in his own house would be the cause of burial both in caves and chambered tombs. It is not at all strange that the same race should have used both for sepulture, when we consider that a “gallery grave” is an artificial cave, and that natural caves are few in number. ”

“ The caves in the mountain limestone of Yorkshire rival in size those of Carniola, or those of Greece, and they are to be seen in all stages of formation. In their gloomy recesses all the higher qualities of a mountaineer may be exercised, and there is sufficient danger to give a keen zest to their exploration. The mountain streams sometimes plunge into a yawning chasm, locally known as a pot, and at others emerge from the dark portals of a cave in full current. There is, perhaps, no place in the world where the subterranean circulation of water may be studied with better advantage. ”

“ The principal changes in the fauna of Great Britain during the historic age are the extinction of the bear, wolf, beaver, reindeer, and wild boar, and the introduction of the domestic fowl, the pheasant, fallow-deer, ass, the domestic cat, the larger breed of oxen, and the common rat; and as this took place at different times, it is obvious that these animals enable us to ascertain the approximate date of the deposit in which their remains happen to occur. ”

“ As you52 look down over the dark crags of millstone grit, great, grey, pavement-like masses of limestone strike the eye, standing above the heather, perfectly bare, and in the distance resembling clearings, and in rainy weather sheets of snow. On approaching them the surface of erosion becomes more and more apparent, and the shapes due to the mere accident of varying hardness in the rock, or the varying quantity of water passing over it, present a most astonishing variety. ”

“ Besides this addition to the European fauna in the pleistocene age, the total absence of the domestic animals is a most important feature. The dog, goat, sheep, Celtic short-horn, and domestic swine are conspicuous by their absence: the reputed association of their remains with those of the pleistocene mammals being due, in all the cases which I have examined in France and Britain, to a confusion between distinct strata in the same cave or river-deposit, which are respectively of pleistocene and prehistoric or historic ages. ”

“ The most important wild animals living in this country during the prehistoric period are the urus, the gigantic skulls of which occur in the peat bogs of England and Scotland, the Irish elk, the moose (Cervus alces) , and the reindeer. The two last are far more abundant in the north than in the south of Britain; their remains have been discovered in the neighbourhood of London, those of both animals at Walthamstow, and those of the latter at Crossness in Kent, on the banks of the Thames. The remains of the bison have not been recorded from any prehistoric deposit in this country. ”

“ On descending into it, the visitor finds himself in the bed of a stream that now roars in a waterfall, now gurgles over the large fallen blocks from the roof, and that here and there has worn for itself deep pools by the mechanical friction of the sand and pebbles brought down by the current. If it be followed down after passing over a waterfall, the light of day is seen streaming upwards beneath the feet from the point where the water leaps into the great chasm of Helln Pot (Figs. 2, b. 3, a) . ”

“ Human remains have been obtained from some of the caves of Belgium under circumstances which are generally considered to indicate that they are of the same antiquity as the skeletons of the animals with which they are associated. The possibility, however, of the contents of caves of different ages being mixed by the action of water, or by the burrowing of animals, or by subsequent interments, renders such an association of little value, unless the evidence be very decided. The famous human skull discovered by Dr. Schmerling156 in the cave of Engis, near Liége, in 1833, is a case in point. ”

“ The prehistoric fauna is distinguished from that of the pleistocene not merely by the appearance of the animals above mentioned, which were hitherto unknown, but by the absence of many species which were living during the latter period. The cave bear, woolly rhinoceros, and mammoth, for example, became extinct, the musk-sheep and lemming were banished from a temperate latitude to take refuge in the regions of the north, while the spotted hyæna, the hippopotamus, and Felis caffer, retired to the warm regions of Africa, where they are still living. ”

“ The course of Dalebeck, as you pass up the valley of Chapel-en-le-Dale, affords a striking instance of the dependence of scenery upon the nature of the rock. In its lower portion it has cut out for itself a deep ravine in the hard Silurian strata, in which you come upon the waterfalls, deep pools, and trees, that look as if they had been transported bodily from the district of Cader Idris, and inserted into the limestone scenery of the dales. ”

“ No longer accessible, except perhaps to the foxes above noticed, this shelter, and its strange sepulture, were slowly and completely hidden from sight by atmospheric degradation bringing down the earthy covering, which, by its thickness, alone proves the great antiquity of the burial in the cave. ”

“ The caves have contributed but very little to our knowledge of the bronze-folk in any part of Europe. Examples, such as those given above, are scattered through France and Spain, but they are not sufficiently important to require notice. We could not expect that men, in the high state of civilization implied by the beautiful jewellery and ornaments which are distinctive of the bronze-folk, would have chosen the wild, half-savage life which is involved in cave-habitation. ”

“ In the cave of Neanderthal, the question of the antiquity of the human remains is not complicated by the juxtaposition of extinct pleistocene animals or of palæolithic implements. Those caves, however, in France which claim especial attention, Aurignac, Bruniquel, and Cro-Magnon, are equally famous for their interments, and the palæolithic implements which they have furnished, along with the remains of the mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, and other extinct animals. ”

“ And since those which are extinct, or which have migrated, could not have lived where their remains are found under the present conditions of life, an inquiry into their history leads us into the general question of the ancient European climate and geography. It is obvious, for example, that the spotted hyæna, which formerly inhabited the caves of Sicily, could not have crossed over to that island after it was separated from Africa and Italy; and it would be impossible for the musk-sheep, the most arctic of the herbivora, to live as far south as Auvergne under the present climatal conditions. ”

“ In some places an infiltration of carbonate305 of lime had cemented organic remains, stones, and earth into a hard mass, which had to be broken up with gunpowder before it could be removed out of the cave. The excitement of extracting from these blocks their treasures was of the very keenest, for we could not tell what a stroke of the hammer would reveal. Sometimes an elephant’s tooth suddenly came to light, at others a hyæna’s jaw, or a rhinoceros’ tooth, or the antler of a reindeer, or the canine of a bear. The bones were so numerous that they scarcely attracted attention. ”

“ It is easy to refer a given cave to the age of the reindeer or of the mammoth because it contains the remains of those animals, but the division has been rendered worthless for chronological purposes, by the fact that both these animals inhabited the region north of the Alps and Pyrenees at the same time, and are to be found together in nearly every bone-cave explored in that area. ”

“ The Hyænodon of the Meiocene had, probably, the same cave-haunting tastes as his descendant, the living Hyæna, and the marsupials of the Mesozoic age might be expected to be preserved in caves, like the fossil marsupials of Australia. The chances of preservation of the remains when once cemented into a fine breccia, or sealed down with a crystalline covering of stalagmite, are very nearly the same as those under which the Pleistocene animals have been handed down to us. ”

“ The reindeer and the musk sheep afford food to the Eskimos now, just as they afforded it to the palæolithic hunters in Europe. No naturalist would deny that the pleistocene musk sheep is of the same species as that of North America, and although the animal is extinct in Europe and Asia, its remains, scattered through Germany, Russia in Europe, and Siberia, show that it formerly ranged in the whole of that area. ”

“ The human remains in a cave in the province of Reggio,96 on the northern flank of the Apennines, brought before the Prehistoric Congress at Bologna by M. l’Abbé Chierici, and considered by him to be proofs of cannibalism, are probably merely the result of interment in a refuse-heap that had previously been accumulated. They were associated with bronze pins, rivets, polished-stone axes, and various implements of bone, fragments of pottery and of charcoal, bones of pig, sheep, and dog, and belong therefore to the period of transition from the neolithic to the bronze age. ”

“ As, however, the cold increased, the percentage of arctic animals would also increase, and the more temperate species be weeded out. For these reasons it has seemed to me, that the machairodus of Kent’s Hole, and the Rhinoceros megarhinus of Oreston, represent an early stage of the pleistocene period, before the arctic mammalia were present in full force in the caves. It is very probable that vast herds of reindeer lived in the south of France, while northern Britain lay buried under the ice-sheet, as well as during the two succeeding physical changes. ”

“ It seems in great part to be derived from comminuted and pulverized bone; for the fleshy parts of animal bodies produce by their decomposition so small a quantity of permanent earthy residuum, that we must seek for the origin of this mass principally in decayed bones. The cave is so dry, that the black earth lies in the state of loose powder, and rises in dust under the feet; it also retains so large a proportion of its original animal matter that it is occasionally used by the peasants as an enriching manure for the adjacent meadows. ”

“ Bones and teeth of the woolly rhinoceros, reindeer, stag, Irish elk, mammoth, hyæna, cave-bear, lion, wolf, fox, and horse rewarded our labours; and frogs’ remains, cemented together by stalagmite, were abundant at the mouth. The teeth preponderated greatly over the bones, and the great bulk were those of the horse. The hyæna-teeth also were very numerous, and in all stages of growth, from the young unworn to the old tooth worn down to the very gums. Those of the mammoth had belonged to a young animal, and one had not been used at all. ”

“ On setting the men to work, in a few minutes we began to discover the remains of dog, marten-cat, fox, badger, goat, Celtic short-horn, roe-deer and stag, horse, and large birds. Mixed with these, as we proceeded, we began to find human bones, between and underneath large masses of rock, that were completely covered up with red silt and sand. As these were cleared away, we gradually realized that we were on the threshold of a sepulchral cave. In the small space then excavated, human remains, belonging to no fewer than five individuals, were found. ”

“ We have seen that cave-hunting is not merely an adventurous amusement, but also a quest that brings us into a great laboratory, so to speak, in which we can see the natural agents at work that have carved out the valleys and gorges, and shaped the hills wherever the calcareous rocks are to be found. ”