Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/356

Rh 336 ARCHAEOLOGY the fossil mammals of the period, so diverse from all that we have been accustomed to associate with man, help to suggest ideas of even an exaggerated antiquity for the era to which they are assignable, and to relegate it to the remotest conceivable antiquity consistent with all other evidence of the oldest traces of man or his arts seemingly contemporaneous with them. Of those now wholly ex tinct, the mammoth or Eleplias primiyenius, the Eleplias antiqiius, the Rhinoceros ticliorinus, the Hippopotamus major, and such great cave carnivora as the Ursus spelceus and the Felis spelcea, are most noticeable for their great size, and in some cases for their enormous destructive powers, in striking contrast to the seemingly helpless condition of primitive man. Yet even some of those formidable mammalia probably owed their extinction fully as much to the presence of man as to any change in temperature and consequent alteration in the required conditions of climate and habitat. We are accustomed to regard the lion, tiger, leopard, panther, and others of the great Felicia; as per taining exclusively to tropical countries. They are in reality limited to tropical jungles and uncultivated regions of great extent, where the abundance of wild vegetable- feeding animals supplies their food. The existence of neither is compatible with the presence of man in any great numbers ; but in his absence those beasts of prey greatly extend their range. The Indian tiger not only follows the antelope and deer in the Himalayan chain to the verge of perpetual snow, but the tiger, leopard, panther, and cheetah hunt their prey beyond that mountain range, even into Siberia. The -influence of man in the extirpation of the wild fauna is illustrated by another class of extinct animals of many historical regions, which yet survive in more favour able localities. The discovery of abundant evidence of a period in the history of central and southern France when the reindeer (Cervus tarandus) formed one of the chief sources both for the food of man and for the materials from which his weapons and implements were made, seems to carry us back to an era, inconceivably remote, when central France was in the condition of Lapland in medireval or still earlier centuries. But the climate of North Britain is not even now incompatible with the existence of the reindeer, and its favourite moss abounds in many parts of the Highlands. It need not therefore surprise us to learn that traces of the reindeer are by no means rare in Scot land ; and numerous examples of its horns have recently been recovered in more than one Caithness locality, with the marks of sawing and cutting for artificial use, and lying among other remains in. stone-built structures of a primitive population of North Britain. How old they are may not be strictly determinable, but they help us to the acceptance of a very modern date for the presence of the reindeer there ; for Torfaeus states that so recently as the twelfth century the Jarls of Orkney were wont to cross the Pentland Firth to chase the roe and the reindeer in the wilds of Caithness. At the same date also we find the skin of the beaver rated for customs duties amongst articles of Scottish export specified in an Act of the reign of David I. Another very characteristic animal pertaining to the pre historic era of European man is the Megaceros Hibernicus, or gigantic Irish elk. Its bones occurred with those of the Elephas primigenius, the Rhinoceros ticliovinus, the Ursus speloeus, and other extinct mammals, alongside of human remains and works of art, in the famous Aurignac cave of the Pyrenees ; and in the recently-explored Brixham cave, on the Devonshire coast, similar remains of the fossil rhinoceros, horse, and reindeer, as well as of several extinct carnivora, lay embedded in the same breccia with flint knives. And not only have the horns and bones of the Megaceros Hibernicus been recovered from Irish bogs and marl -pits, with marks of artificial cutting, but a rude Irish lyre, found in the moat of Desmond Castle, Adare, has been pronounced by Professor Owen to be made from the bone of this extinct deer. So is it with the ancient Bovidce, not only adapted for the chase, but suitable for domestication ; such as the Bos primigenius, the Bos longifrons, and the Bison priscus. Their remains have been found in submarine forests, or mingling in the drift or cave deposits with the Eleplias- primigenius, the Felis spelvea, and others of the most gigantic fossil mammals; while abundant traces reveal their existence not merely contemporaneous with man, but within definite historical periods. The great alluvial valley of the river Forth has yielded another class of relics connecting the gigantic fossil mam malia of a prehistoric epoch with man. The disclosures of the Carse of Falkirk have repeatedly included remains of the- Elephas primigenius: and in at least one case its tusks were found in such perfect condition as to be available for the ivory-turner, though lying embedded at a depth of 20 feet in the boulder clay. But in the neighbouring valley of the Forth the fossil whale (Balwnoptera) has not only been repeatedly found far inland, buried in the alluvial soil, at levels varying from 20 to 25 feet above high-water mark, but in at least two instances the rude lance or harpoon of deer s horn lay alongside of the skeletons ; and near another of them were found pieces of stag s horn, artificially cut, and one of them perforated with a hole about an inch in diameter. Flint implements, an oaken quern, and other ingenious traces of primitive art, recovered from the same alluvial soil, all tell of a time when the British savage hunted the whale in the shallows of a tide at the base of the Ochil hills, now between 20 and 30 feet above the highest tides and 7 miles distant from the sea. There is no doubt that the disappearance of the whale from the British shores, like the reindeer from its northern valleys, is due far more to the presence of man than to- any change of temperature so greatly affecting the con ditions of life as to involve their extinction. Nevertheless it is convenient to recognise in the disappearance of- such emigrant species from the historic areas the close of the palasontological age. The Urus, the Aurochs, the Bos longifrons, or native ox of the Roman period, and others of that important class of animals which man first began to turn to account for domestication, have also ceased to exist among European fauna ; but this is clearly traceable to the destructive presence of man. Within three or four centuries the Urus (Bos primigenius) was still known in Germany ; the Aurochs (Bos priscus) is even now preserved under special protection in Lithuania ; and herds of British .wild cattle in Cadzow forest, Lanarkshire, and at Chilling- ham Park, Northumberland, perpetuate varieties otherwise extinct. Reverting, then, to the classification which prehistoric archeology admits of, in the light of its most recent dis closures, it appears to be divisible into four distinct epochs, of which the first two embrace successive stages of the age of stone implements. 1. The Palceolithic Period is that which has also been designated the Drift Period. The troglodytes, or cave- dwellers, of this primitive era were to all appearance contemporaneous with the mammoth, the woolly-haired rhinoceros, and the great cave carnivora already named. In England, France, Belgium, and other countries of Europe, numerous caves have been explored which were undoubtedly the habitations and workshops of the men of this period. These caverns vary in character and dimen sions according to the geological features of the localities where they occur ; but all alike involve the simple feature