Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/279

Rh CAVE Pleistocene. These are sometimes called Quaternary, under the mistaken idea that they belong to an age succeeding the Tertiary period. 2d, Those which contain the remains of the domestic animals in association with the remains of man either in the Neolithic. Bronze, or Iron stages of civilization are termed Prehistoric. 3d, The third group consists of those which can be brought into relation with the historic period, and are therefore termed Historic. The search after eburfossile or unicorns horn, or in other words the fossil bones which ranked high in the materia medica of the 16th and 17th centuries, led to the discovery of the ossiferous caverns of the Hartz Mountains, and of Hungary and Franconia. The famous cave of Gailenreuth in the last of these districts was explored by Dr Goldfuss in 1810. The bones of the hyaena, lion, wolf, fox, and stag, which it contained, were identified by Baron Cuvier, and some of the skulls have been recently proved by Professor Busk to belong to the grizzly bear. They were associated with the bones of the reindeer, horse, and bison, as well as with those of the great cave bear. These dis coveries were of very great interest, because they established the fact that the above animals had lived in Germany in ancient times. The first bone cave systematically explored iu England was one at Orreston near Plymouth in the year 1816, which proved that an extinct species of rhinoceros (R. Megarhinus) lived in that district. Four years later the famous hyaena den at Kirkdale in Yorkshire was explored by Dr Buckland. He brought forward proof that it had been inhabited by hyaenas, and that the broken and gnawed bones of the mammoth, rhinoceros, stag, bison, and horse belonged to animals which had been dragged in for food. He pointed out that all these animals had lived in Yorkshire in ancient times, and that it was impossible for the carcases of the rhinoceros, hyaena, and mammoth to have been floated from tropical regions into the places where he found their bones. He subsequently investigated bone caves in Derbyshire, South Wales, and Somerset, as well as in Germany, and published his Reliquiae Diluviance in 1822, a work which laid the foundations of the new science of cave-hunting in this country. The well-known cave of Kent s Hole near Torquay, furnished the Rev. J. McEnery, between the years 1825 and 1841, with the first flint implements discovered in intimate association with the bones of extinct animals. He recognized the fact that they proved the existence of man in Devonshire while those animals were alive, but the idea was too novel to be accepted by his contemporaries. His discoveries have since been verified by the subsequent investigations carried on by Mr Godwin Austen, and ultimately by the committee of the British Association, which has been at work for several years under the guidance of Mr Pengelly. There are four distinct strata in the cave. 1st, The surface is composed of dark earth, and contains mediaeval remains, Roman pottery, and articles which prove that it was in use during the Iron, Bronze, and Xeolithic ages. 2d, Below this is a stalagmite floor, varying in thickness from 1 to 3 feet, and covering (3d) the red earth, which contained bones of the hyaena, lion, mammoth, rhinoceros, and other animals, in association with flint implements and an engraved antler, which proved man to have been an inhabitant of the cavern during the time of its deposition. th, Filling the bottom of the cave is a hard breccia, with the remains of bears and flint implements, in the main ruder than those found above ; in some places it was no less than 1 2 feet thick. The most remarkable animal found in Kent s Hole is the sabre-toothed carnivore, Machairodus latidens of Owen. While the value of Mr McEnery s discoveries was in dis pute the exploration of the cave of Brixham near Torquay in 1858 proved that man was coeval with the extinct mammalia, and in the following year additional proof was offered by the implements that were found in Wookey Hole. Similar remains have been met with in the caves of Wales, and in England as far north as Derbyshire (Cres- well), proving that over the whole of southern and middle England men, in precisely the same stage of rude civiliza tion, hunted the mammoth and rhinoceros and other extinct animals. Cave-dwellers allied to Eskimos. The caves and rock shelters of Perigord, explored by the late M. Lartet and our countryman Mr Christy, in 1863-4, have not only afforded accumulative proof of the co-existence of man with the extinct mammalia, but have given us a clue as to the race that so existed. They penetrate the sides of the valleys of the Dordogne and Vezere, and offer as vivid a picture of the life of the period as that revealed of Italian manners in the 1st century by the buried cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii. The old floors of human occupation consist of broken bones of animals killed in the chase, mingled with rude implements and weapons of bone and unpolished stone, and with charcoal and burnt stones, which indicate the position of the hearths. Flakes without number, awls, lance-heads, hammers, and saws made of flint rest pele-mele with bone needles, sculptured reindeer antlers, arrowheads, and harpoons, and bones of the reindeer, bison, horse, ibex, Saiga antelope, and musk sheep. These singular accumulations of debris mark the places where the ancient hunters lived, and are merely the refuse cast aside. The reindeer formed by far the greater portion of the food, and must have lived in enormous herds at that time in the centre of France. From this, as well as from the presence of the most arctic of the herbivores, the musk sheep, we may infer the severe climate of that portion of France at that time. Besides these animals the cave bear and lion have been met with in one, and the mammoth in five localities, and their remains bear marks of cutting or scraping which showed they fell, a prey to the hunters. The most remarkable remains left behind in these refuse heaps are the sculptured reindeer antlers and figures engraved on fragments of schist and on ivory. A well-defined outline of an ox stands out boldly from one piece of antler ; a second represents a reindeer kneeling down in an easy attitude with his head thrown up in the air so that the antlers rest on the shoulders, and the back forms an even surface for a handle, which is too small to be grasped by an ordinary European hand ; in a third a man stands close to a horse s head, and on the other side of the same cylinder are two heads of bisons drawn with sufficient clearness to ensure recognition by any one who has seen that animal. On a fourth the natural curvature of one of the tines has been taken advantage of by the artist to engrave the head and the characteristic recurved horns of the ibex ; and on a fifth horses are represented with large heads, upright dishevelled manes, and shaggy ungroomed tails. The most striking figure is that of the mammoth engraved on a fragment of its own tusk ; the peculiar spiral curvature of the tusk and the long mane, which are now not to be found in any living elephant, prove that the original was familiar to the eye of the artist. These drawings probably employed the idle hours of the hunter, and hand down to us the scenes which he witnessed in the chase. They are full of artistic feeling and are evidently drawn from life. The mammoth is engraved in its own ivory, and the reindeer and the stag on their respective antlers. The general idea which we are justified in forming of these ancient dwellers in Aquitaine is that they lived by hunting and fishing, and that they were clad with skins sewn together with sinews or strips of intestines. They possessed no domestic animals, nor were they acquainted with spinning or with the potter s art. We have no evidence that they