Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/628

610 that the neolithic peoples had an organized religious system. These rude sculptures, ever repeated exactly, which represent a female divinity upon the walls of the grottoes of Baye, even prove that the religion of Neolithic times had risen to the height of anthropomorphism. Now, a clearly-defined deity, a god in human form, must have priests that are regularly initiated; and a surgical initiatory rite recurs over and over again even among civilized peoples. Is it objected that the cranial mutilations were of too dangerous a character to be practised in religious ceremonies? But per se trepanning is not a dangerous operation. Very frequently, no doubt, it is fatal, but the reason is, because it is resorted to only in the last extremity. It is not the trepanning which kills the patient, but the cerebral lesions, which we seek to relieve in this way. Apart from these complications, its dangers are not very great. On the other hand, religious enthusiasm knows no bounds: and if certain deities exact human sacrifices, certainly those should be considered lenient who require of a man only a piece of his skull. What is piercing the skull, compared with disemboweling? And yet it is known that, among the negroes of Western Africa, certain individuals, to secure initiation in sainthood, and to prove the virtue of their amulets or gree-grees, open their bellies with their own hands, pull their bowels out, put them back, and sew themselves up. Many succumb to this butchery, but others rally and become the saints of their tribe." ("Bulletin de la Société d'Anthropologie," 2e série, tome ix., p. 199.)

Doubtless those who survived the piercing of the skull became equally worshipful personages, held in honor during their lives and after their deaths. Out of their sacred skulls were cut plates of bone, as shown in the engraving. They were then kept as sacred relics, or even worn as amulets, for many of them are pierced through the centre evidently with the view of suspending them. The skull in the figure has undergone three mutilations, D, E, and F, doubtless for the purpose of making amulets. Nor ought we to deride this superstition which attaches supernatural virtue to a bone from the human head: as late as the last century, a powder made from certain bones of the cranium used to be prescribed as a cure for epilepsy. It has been remarked that all the skulls in which disks of bone were found, were pierced during the life of the individual. If our hypothesis be true, the only ones honored with this practice would have been those consecrated to the service of the gods. If, on the other hand, motives be sought wherefore the dead should be thus honored, we are irresistibly conducted to their steadfast faith in the immortality of the soul. A person who had been trepanned comes to die—one or more pieces are cut from his sacred cranium for amulets or relics; but, inasmuch as the man could not live in another world with a mutilated skull, another piece of skull is given him to make him whole, when he reaches the abode of the blest.—La Nature.