Ancient Man in Britain

It cannot have been merely for love of personal ornaments that the Crô-Magnons of southern France imported Indian Ocean shells, and those of Central and Western Europe created a trade in Mediterranean shells. Like the ancient inhabitants of the Nile Valley who in remote pre-dynastic times imported shells, not only from the Mediterranean but from the Red Sea, along a long and dangerous desert trade-route, they evidently had imparted to shells a definite religious significance. The "luck-girdle" of snail-shells worn by the "Red Man of Paviland" has, therefore, an interesting history. When the Crô-Magnons reached Britain they brought with them not only implements invented and developed elsewhere, but a heritage of religious beliefs connected with shell ornaments and with the red earth with which the corpse was smeared when laid in its last resting-place.

The ancient religious beliefs connected with shells appear to have spread far and wide. Traces of them still survive in districts far separated from one another and from the area of origin—the borderlands of Asia and Africa. In Japanese mythology a young god, Ohonamochie—a sort of male Cinderella—is slain by his jealous brothers. His mother makes appeal to a sky deity who sends to her aid the two goddesses Princess Cockleshell and Princess Clam. Princess Cockleshell burns and grinds her shell, and with water provided by Princess Clam prepares an elixir called "nurse's milk" or "mother's milk". As soon as this "milk" is smeared over the young god, he is restored to life. In the Hebrides it is still the custom of mothers to burn and grind the cockle-shell to prepare a lime-water for children who suffer from what in Gaelic is called "wasting". In North America shells of Unio were placed in the graves of Red Indians "as food for the dead during the journey to the land of spirits". The pearls were used in India as medicines. "The burnt powder of the gems, if taken with water, cures hæmorrhages, prevents evil spirits working mischief in men's minds, cures lunacy and all mental diseases, jaundice, &c.... Rubbed over the body with other medicines it cures leprosy and all skin diseases."[29] The ancient Cretans, whose culture was carried into Asia and through Europe by their enterprising sea-and-land traders and prospectors, attached great importance to the cockle-shell which they connected with their mother goddess, the source of all life and the giver of medicines and food. Sir Arthur Evans found a large number of cockle-shells, some in Faeince, in the shrine of the serpent goddess in the ruins of the Palace of Knossos. The fact that the Cretans made artificial cockle-shells is of special interest, especially when we find that in Egypt the earliest use to which gold was put was in the manufacture of models of snail-shells in a necklace.[30] In different countries cowrie shells were similarly imitated in stone, ivory, and metal.[31]

Shells were thought to impart vitality and give protection, not only to human beings, but even to the plots of the earliest florists and agriculturists. "Mary, Mary, quite contrairie", who in the nursery rhyme has in her garden "cockle-shells all in row", was perpetuating an ancient custom. The cockle-shell is still favoured by conservative villagers, and may be seen in their garden plots and in graveyards. Shells placed at cottage doors, on window-sills, and round fire-places are supposed to bring luck and give security, like the horse-shoe on the door.

The mother goddess, remembered as the fairy queen, is still connected with shells in Hebridean folk-lore. A Gaelic poet refers to the goddess as "the maiden queen of wisdom who dwelt in the beauteous bower of the single tree where she could see the whole world and where no fool could see her beauty". She lamented the lack of wisdom among women, and invited them to her knoll. When they were assembled there the goddess appeared, holding in her hand the copan Moire ("Cup of Mary"), as the blue-eyed limpet shell is called. The shell contained "the ais (milk) of wisdom", which she gave to all who sought it. "Many", we are told, "came to the knoll too late, and there was no wisdom left for them."[32] A Gaelic poet says the "maiden queen" was attired in emerald green, silver, and mother-of-pearl.

Here a particular shell is used by an old goddess for a specific purpose. She imparts knowledge by providing a magic drink referred to as "milk". The question arises, however, if a deity of this kind was known in early times. Did the Crô-Magnons of the Aurignacian stage of culture conceive of a god or goddess in human form who nourished her human children and instructed them as do human mothers? The figure of a woman, holding in her hand a horn which appears to have been used for drinking from, is of special interest in this connection. As will be shown, the Hebridean "maiden" links with other milk-providing deities.

The earliest religious writings in the world are the Pyramid Texts of ancient Egypt which, as Professor Breasted so finely says, "vaguely disclose to us a vanished world of thought and speech". They abound "in allusions to lost myths, to customs and usages long since ended". Withal, they reflect the physical conditions of a particular area—the Nile Valley, in which the sun and the river are two outstanding natural features. There was, however, a special religious reason for connecting the sun and the river.

In these old Pyramid Texts are survivals from a period apparently as ancient as that of early Aurignacian civilization in Europe, and perhaps, as the clue afforded by the Indian shell found in the Grimaldi cave, not unconnected with it. The mother goddess, for instance, is prayed to so that she may suckle the soul of the dead Pharaoh as a mother suckles her child and never wean him.[33] Milk was thus the elixir of life, and as the mother goddess of Egypt is found to have been identified with the cowrie—indeed to have been the spirit or personification of the shell—the connection between shells and milk may have obtained even in Aurignacian times in south-western Europe. That the mother goddess of Crô-Magnons had a human form is suggested by the representations of mothers which have been brought to light. An Aurignacian statuette of limestone found in the cave of Willendorf, Lower Austria, has been called the "Venus of Willendorf". She is very corpulent—apparently because she was regarded as a giver of life. Other statues of like character have been unearthed near Mentone, and they have a striking resemblance to the figurines of fat women found in the pre-dynastic graves of Egypt and in Crete and Malta. The bas-relief of the fat woman sculptured on a boulder inside the Aurignacian shelter of Laussel may similarly have been a goddess. In her right hand she holds a bison's horn—perhaps a drinking horn containing an elixir. Traces of red colouring remain on the body. A notable fact about these mysterious female forms is that the heads are formal, the features being scarcely, if at all, indicated.

Even if no such "idols" had been found, it does not follow that the early people had no ideas about supernatural beings. There are references in Gaelic to the coich anama (the "spirit case", or "soul shell", or "soul husk"). In Japan, which has a particularly rich and voluminous mythology, there are no idols in Shinto temples. A deity is symbolized by the shintai (God body), which may be a mirror, a weapon, or a round stone, a jewel or a pearl. A pearl is a tama; so is a precious stone, a crystal, a bit of worked jade, or a necklace of jewels, ivory, artificial beads, &c. The soul of a supernatural being is called mi-tama—mi being now a honorific prefix, but originally signifying a water serpent (dragon god). The shells, of which ancient deities were personifications, may well have been to the Crô-Magnons pretty much what a tama is to the Japanese, and what magic crystals were to mediæval Europeans who used them for magical purposes. It may have been believed that in the shells, green stones, and crystals remained the influence of deities as the power of beasts of prey remained in their teeth and claws. The ear-rings and other Pagan ornaments which Jacob buried with Laban's idols under the oak at Shechem were similarly supposed to be god bodies or coagulated forms of "life substance". All idols were temporary or permanent bodies of deities, and idols were not necessarily large. It would seem to be a reasonable conclusion that all the so-called ornaments found in ancient graves were supposed to have had an intimate connection with the supernatural beings who gave origin to and sustained life. These ornaments, or charms, or amulets, imparted vitality to human beings, because they were regarded as the substance of life itself. The red jasper worn in the waist girdles of the ancient Egyptians was reputed, as has been stated, to be a coagulated drop of the blood of the mother goddess Isis. Blood was the essence of life.

The red woman or goddess of the Laussel shelter was probably coloured so as to emphasize her vitalizing attributes; the red colour animated the image.

An interesting reference in Shakespeare's Hamlet to ancient burial customs may here be quoted, because it throws light on the problem under discussion. When Ophelia's body is carried into the graveyard[34] one of the priests says that as "her death was doubtful" she should have been buried in "ground unsanctified"—that is, among the suicides and murderers. Having taken her own life, she was unworthy of Christian burial, and should be buried in accordance with Pagan customs. In all our old churchyards the takers of life were interred on the north side, and apparently in Shakespeare's day traditional Pagan rites were observed in the burials of those regarded as Pagans. The priest in Hamlet, therefore, says of Ophelia:

There are no shards (fragments of pottery) in the Crô-Magnon graves, but flints and pebbles mingle with shells, teeth, and other charms and amulets. Vast numbers of perforated shells have been found in the burial caves near Mentone. In one case the shells are so numerous that they seem to have formed a sort of burial mantle. "Similarly," says Professor Osborn, describing another of these finds, "the female skeleton was enveloped in a bed of shells not perforated; the legs were extended, while the arms were stretched beside the body; there were a few pierced shells and a few bits of silex. One of the large male skeletons of the same grotto had the lower limbs extended, the upper limbs folded, and was decorated with a gorget and crown of perforated shells; the head rested on a block of red stone." In another case "heavy stones protected the body from disturbance; the head was decorated with a circle of perforated shells coloured in red, and implements of various types were carefully placed on the forehead and chest". The body of the Combe-Capelle man "was decorated with a necklace of perforated shells and surrounded with a great number of fine Aurignacian flints. It appears", adds Osborn, "that in all the numerous burials of these grottos of Aurignacian age and industry of the Crô-Magnon race we have the burial standards which prevailed in western Europe at this time."[35]

It has been suggested by one of the British archæologists that the necklaces of perforated cowrie shells and the red pigment found among the remains of early man in Britain were used by children. This theory does not accord with the evidence afforded by the Grimaldi caves, in which the infant skeletons are neither coloured nor decorated. Occasionally, however, the children were interred in burial mantles of small perforated shells, while female adults were sometimes placed in beds of unperforated shells. Shells have been found in early British graves. These include Nerita litoralis, and even Patella vulgata, the common limpet. Holes were rubbed in them so that they might be strung together. In a megalithic cist unearthed in Phœnix Park, Dublin, in 1838, two male skeletons had each beside them perforated shells (Nerita litoralis). During the construction of the Edinburgh and Granton railway there was found beside a skeleton in a stone cist a quantity of cockle-shell rings. Two dozen perforated oyster-shells were found in a single Orkney cist. Many other examples of this kind could be referred to.[36]

In the Crô-Magnon caverns are imprints of human hands which had been laid on rock and then dusted round with coloured earth. In a number of cases it is shown that one or more finger joints of the left hand had been cut off.

The practice of finger mutilation among Bushman, Australian, and Red Indian tribes, is associated with burial customs and the ravages of disease. A Bushman woman may cut off a joint of one of her fingers when a near relative is about to die. Red Indians cut off finger-joints when burying their dead during a pestilence, so as "to cut off deaths"; they sacrificed a part of the body to save the whole. In Australia finger mutilation is occasionally practised. Highland Gaelic stories tell of heroes who lie asleep to gather power which will enable them to combat with monsters or fierce enemies. Heroines awake them by cutting off a finger joint, a part of the ear, or a portion of skin from the scalp.[37]

The colours used in drawings of hands in Palæolithic caves are black, white, red, and yellow, as the Abbé Breuil has noted. In Spain and India, the hand prints are supposed to protect dwellings from evil influences. Horse-shoes, holly with berries, various plants, shells, &c, are used for a like purpose among those who in our native land perpetuate ancient customs.

The Arabs have a custom of suspending figures of an open hand from the necks of their children, and the Turks and Moors paint hands upon their ships and houses, "as an antidote and counter charm to an evil eye; for five is with them an unlucky number; and 'five (fingers, perhaps) in your eyes' is their proverb of cursing and defiance". In Portugal the hand spell is called the figa. Southey suggests that our common phrase "a fig for him" was derived from the name of the Portuguese hand amulet.[38]

"The figo for thy friendship" is an interesting reference by Shakespeare.[39] Fig or figo is probably from fico, a snap of the fingers, which in French is faire la figue, and in Italian far le fiche. Finger snapping had no doubt originally a magical significance.

CHAPTER V
New Races in Europe

The Solutrean Industry—A Racial and Cultural Intrusion—Decline of Aurignacian Art—A God-cult—The Solutrean Thor—Open-air Life—Magdalenian Culture—Decline of Flint Working—Horn and Bone Weapons and Implements—Revival of Crô-Magnon Art—The Lamps and Palettes of Cave Artists—The Domesticated Horse—Eskimos in Europe—Magdalenian Culture in England—The Vanishing Ice—Reindeer migrate Northward—New Industries—Tardenoisian and Azilian Industries—Pictures and Symbols of Azilians—"Long-heads" and "Broad-heads"—Maglemosian Culture of Fair Northerners—Pre-Neolithic Peoples in Britain.

In late Aurignacian times the influence of a new industry was felt in Western Europe. It first came from the south, and reached as far north as England where it can be traced in the caverns. Then, in time, it spread westward and wedge-like through Central Europe in full strength, with the force and thoroughness of an invasion, reaching the northern fringe of the Spanish coast. This was the Solutrean industry which had distinctive and independent features of its own. It was not derived from Aurignacian but had developed somewhere in Africa—perhaps in Somaliland, whence it radiated along the Libyan coast towards the west and eastward into Asia. The main or "true" Solutrean influence entered Europe from the south-east. It did not pass into Italy, which remained in the Aurignacian stage until Azilian times, nor did it cross the Pyrenees or invade Spain south of the Cantabrian Mountains. The earlier "influence" is referred to as "proto-Solutrean".

Solutrean is well represented in Hungary where no trace of Aurignacian culture has yet been found. Apparently that part of Europe had offered no attractions for the Crô-Magnons.

Who the carriers of this new culture were it is as yet impossible to say with confidence. They may have been a late "wave" of the same people who had first introduced Aurignacian culture into Europe, and they may have been representative of a different race. Some ethnologists incline to connect the Solutrean culture with a new people whose presence is indicated by the skulls found at Brünn and Brüx in Bohemia. These intruders had lower foreheads than the Crô-Magnons, narrower and longer faces, and low cheek-bones. It may be that they represented a variety of the Mediterranean race. Whoever they were, they did not make much use of ivory and bone, but they worked flint with surpassing skill and originality. Their technique was quite distinct from the Aurignacian. With the aid of wooden or bone tools, they finished their flint artifacts by pressure, gave them excellent edges and points, and shaped them with artistic skill. Their most characteristic flints are the so-called laurel-leaf (broad) and willow-leaf (narrow) lances. These were evidently used in the chase. There is no evidence that they were used in battle. Withal, their weapons had a religious significance. Fourteen laurel-leaf spear-heads of Solutrean type which were found together at Volgu, Saône-et-Loire, are believed to have been a votive offering to a deity. At any rate, these were too finely worked and too fragile, like some of the peculiar Shetland and Swedish knives of later times, to have been used as implements. One has retained traces of red colouring. It may be that the belief enshrined in the Gaelic saying, "Every weapon has its demon", had already come into existence. In Crete the double-axe was in Minoan times a symbol of a deity;[40] and in northern Egypt and on the Libyan coast the crossed arrows symbolized the goddess Neith; while in various countries, and especially in India, there are ancient stories about the spirits of weapons appearing in visions and promising to aid great hunters and warriors. The custom of giving weapons personal names, which survived for long in Europe, may have had origin in Solutrean times.

Art languished in Solutrean times. Geometrical figures were incised on ivory and bone; some engraving of mammoths, reindeer, and lions have been found in Moravia and France. When the human figure was depicted, the female was neglected and studies made of males. It may be that the Solutreans had a god-cult as distinguished from the goddess-cult of the Aurignacians, and that their "flint-god" was an early form of Zeus, or of Thor, whose earliest hammer was of flint. The Romans revered "Jupiter Lapis" (silex). When the solemn oath was taken at the ceremony of treaty-making, the representative of the Roman people struck a sacrificial pig with the silex and said, "Do thou, Diespiter, strike the Roman people as I strike this pig here to-day, and strike them the more, as thou art greater and stronger". Mr. Cyril Bailey (The Religion of Ancient Rome, p. 7) expresses the view that "in origin the stone is itself the god".

During Solutrean times the climate of Europe, although still cold, was drier that in Aurignacian times. It may be that the intruders seized the flint quarries of the Crô-Magnons, and also disputed with them the possession of hunting-grounds. The cave art declined or was suspended during what may have been a military regime and perhaps, too, under the influence of a new religion and new social customs. Open-air camps beside rock-shelters were greatly favoured. It may be, as has been suggested, that the Solutreans were as expert as the modern Eskimos in providing clothing and skin-tents. Bone needles were numerous. They fed well, and horse-flesh was a specially favoured food.

In their mountain retreats, the Aurignacians may have concentrated more attention than they had previously done on the working of bone and horn; it may be that they were reinforced by new races from north-eastern Europe, who had been developing a distinctive industry on the borders of Asia. At any rate, the industry known as Magdalenian became widespread when the ice-fields crept southward again, and southern and central Europe became as wet and cold as in early Aurignacian times. Solutrean culture gradually declined and vanished and Magdalenian became supreme.

The Magdalenian stage of culture shows affinities with Aurignacian and betrays no influence of Solutrean technique. The method of working flint was quite different. The Magdalenians, indeed, appear to have attached little importance to flint for implements of the chase. They often chipped it badly in their own way and sometimes selected flint of poor quality, but they had beautiful "scrapers" and "gravers" of flint. It does not follow, however, that they were a people on a lower stage of culture than the Solutreans. New inventions had rendered it unnecessary for them to adopt Solutrean technique. Most effective implements of horn and bone had come into use and, if wars were waged—there is no evidence of warfare—the Magdalenians were able to give a good account of themselves with javelins and exceedingly strong spears which were given a greater range by the introduction of spear-throwers—"cases" from which spears were thrown. The food supply was increased by a new method of catching fish. Barbed harpoons of reindeer-horn had been invented, and no doubt many salmon, &c., were caught at river-side stations.

The Crô-Magnons, as has been found, were again in the ascendant, and their artistic genius was given full play as in Aurignacian times, and, no doubt, as a result of the revival of religious beliefs that fostered art as a cult product. Once again the painters, engravers, and sculptors adorned the caves with representations of wild animals. Colours were used with increasing skill and taste. The artists had palettes on which to mix their colours, and used stone lamps, specimens of which have been found, to light up their "studios" in deep cave recesses. During this Magdalenian stage of culture the art of the Crô-Magnons reached its highest standard of excellence, and grew so extraordinarily rich and varied that it compares well with the later religious arts of ancient Egypt and Babylonia.

The horse appears to have been domesticated. There is at Saint Michel d'Arudy a "Celtic" horse depicted with a bridle, while at La Madeleine was found a "bâton de commandement" on which a human figure, with a stave in his right hand, walks past two horses which betray no signs of alarm.

Our knowledge is scanty regarding the races that occupied Europe during Magdalenian times. In addition to the Crô-Magnons there were other distinctive types. One of these is represented by the Chancelade skeleton found at Raymonden shelter. Some think it betrays Eskimo affinities and represents a racial "drift" from the Russian steppes. In his Ancient Hunters Professor Sollas shows that there are resemblances between Eskimo and Magdalenian artifacts.

The Magdalenian culture reached England, although it never penetrated into Italy, and was shut out from the greater part of Spain. It has been traced as far north as Derbyshire, on the north-eastern border of which the Cresswell caves have yielded Magdalenian relics, including flint-borers, engravers, &c., and bone implements, including a needle, an awl, chisels, an engraving of a horse on bone, &c. Kent's Cavern, near Torquay in Devonshire, has also yielded Magdalenian flints and implements of bone, including pins, awls, barbed harpoons, &c.

During early Magdalenian times, however, our native land did not offer great attractions to Continental people. The final glacial epoch may have been partial, but it was severe, and there was a decided lowering of the temperature. Then came a warmer and drier spell, which was followed by the sixth partial glaciation. Thereafter the "great thaw" opened up Europe to the invasion of new races from Asia and Africa.

Three distinct movements of peoples in Europe can be traced in post-Magdalenian times, and during what has been called the "Transition Period", between the Upper Palæolithic and Lower Neolithic Ages or stages. The ice-cap retreated finally from the mountains of Scotland and Sweden, and the reindeer migrated northward. Magdalenian civilization was gradually broken up, and the cave art suffered sharp decline until at length it perished utterly. Trees flourished in areas where formerly the reindeer scraped the snow to crop moss and lichen, and rich pastures attracted the northward migrating red deer, the roe-deer, the ibex, the wild boar, wild cattle, &c.

The new industries are known as the Tardenoisian, the Azilian, and the Maglemosian.

Tardenoisian flints are exceedingly small and beautifully worked, and have geometric forms; they are known as "microliths" and "pygmy flints". They were evidently used in catching fish, some being hooks and others spear-heads; and they represent a culture that spread round the Mediterranean basin: these flints are found in northern Egypt, Tunis, Algeria, and Italy; from Italy they passed through Europe into England and Scotland. A people who decorated with scenes of daily life rock shelters and caves in Spain, and hunted red deer and other animals with bows and arrows, were pressing northward across the new grass-lands towards the old Magdalenian stations. Men wore pants and feather head-dresses; women had short gowns, blouses, and caps, as had the late Magdalenians, and both sexes wore armlets, anklets, and other ornaments of magical potency. Females were nude when engaged in the chase. The goddess Diana had evidently her human prototypes. There were ceremonial dances, as the rock pictures show; women lamented over graves, and affectionate couples—at least they seem to have been affectionate—walked hand in hand as they gradually migrated towards northern Spain, and northern France and Britain. The horse was domesticated, and is seen being led by the halter. Wild animal "drives" were organized, and many victims fell to archer and spearman. Arrows were feathered; bows were large and strong. Symbolic signs indicate that a script similar to those of the Ægean area, the northern African coast, and pre-dynastic Egypt was freely used. Drawings became conventional, and ultimately animals and human beings were represented by signs. This culture lasted after the introduction of the Neolithic industry in some areas, and in others after the bronze industry had been adopted by sections of the people.

When the Magdalenian harpoon of reindeer horn was imitated by the flat harpoon of red-deer horn, this new culture became what is known as Azilian. It met and mingled with Tardenoisian, which appears to have arrived later, and the combined industries are referred to as Azilian-Tardenoisian.

While the race-drifts, represented by the carriers of the Azilian and Tardenoisian industries, were moving into France and Britain, another invasion from the East was in progress. It is represented in the famous Ofnet cave where long-heads and broad-heads were interred. The Asiatic Armenoids (Alpine type) had begun to arrive in Europe, the glaciers having vanished in Asia Minor. Skulls of broad-heads found in the Belgian cave of Furfooz, in which sixteen human skeletons were unearthed in 1867, belong to this period. The early Armenoids met and mingled with representatives of the blond northern race, and were the basis of the broad-headed blonds of Holland, Denmark, and Belgium.

Maglemosian culture is believed to have been introduced by the ancestors of the fair peoples of Northern Europe. It has been so named after the finds at Maglemose in the "Great Moor", near Mullerup, on the western coast of Zeeland. A lake existed at this place at a time when the Baltic was an inland water completely shut off from the North Sea. In a peat bog, formerly the bed of the lake, were found a large number of flint and bone artifacts. These included Tardenoisian microliths, barbed harpoons of bone, needles of bone, spears of bone, &c. Bone was more freely used than horn for implements and weapons. The animals hunted included the stag, roe-deer, moose, wild ox, and wild boar. Dogs were domesticated. It appears that the Maglemosians were lake-dwellers. Their houses, however, had not been erected on stilts, but apparently on a floating platform of logs, which was no doubt anchored or moored to the shore. There are traces of Magdalenian influence in Maglemosian culture. Although many decorative forms on bone implements and engravings on rocks are formal and symbolic, there are some fine and realistic representations of animals worthy of the Magdalenian cave artists. Traces of the Maglemosian racial drift have been obtained on both sides of the Baltic and in the Danish kitchen middens. Engravings on rocks at Lake Onega in Northern Russia closely resemble typical Maglemosian work. Apparently the northern fair peoples entered Europe from Western Siberia, and in time were influenced by Neolithic culture. But before the Europeans began to polish their stone implements and weapons, the blond hunters and fishermen settled not only in Denmark and Southern Sweden and Norway but also in Britain.

At the time when the Baltic was an inland fresh-water lake, the southern part of the North Sea was dry land, and trees grew on Dogger Bank, from which fishermen still occasionally lift in their trawls lumps of "moor-log" (peat) and the bones of animals, including those of the reindeer, the red deer, the horse, the wild ox, the bison, the Irish elk, the bear, the wolf, the beaver, the woolly rhinoceros, the mammoth, and the walrus. No doubt the Maglemosians found their way over this "land-bridge", crossing the rivers in rude boats, and on foot when the rivers were frozen. Evidence has been forthcoming that they also followed the present coast line towards Boulogne, near which a typical Maglemosian harpoon has been discovered.

Traces of Maglemosian influence have been found as far north as Scotland on the Hebridean islands of Oronsay and Risga. The MacArthur cave at Oban reveals Azilian artifacts. In the Victoria cave near Settle in Yorkshire a late Magdalenian or proto-Azilian harpoon made of reindeer-horn is of special interest, displaying, as it does, a close connection between late Magdalenian and early Azilian. Barbed harpoons, found at the shelter of Druimvargie, near Oban, are Azilian, some displaying Maglemosian features. Barbed harpoons of bone, and especially those with barbs on one side only, are generally Maglemosian, while those of horn and double-barbed are typically Azilian.

Apparently the fair Northerners, the carriers of Maglemosian culture, and the dark Iberians, the carriers of Azilian culture, met and mingled in Scotland and England long before the Neolithic industry was introduced. There were also, it would appear, communities in Britain of Crô-Magnons, and perhaps of other racial types that existed on the Continent and in late Magdalenian times. The fair peoples of England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland are not therefore all necessarily descendants of Celts, Angles, Saxons, and Vikings. The pioneer settlers in the British Isles, in all probability, included blue and grey-eyed and fair or reddish-haired peoples who in Scotland may have formed the basis of the later Caledonian type, compared by Tacitus to the Germans, but bearing an undoubted Celtic racial name, the military aristocrats being Celts.[41]

CHAPTER VI
The Faithful Dog

Transition Period between Palæolithic and Neolithic Ages—Theory of the Neolithic Edge—Crô-Magnon Civilization was broken up by Users of Bow and Arrow—Domesticated Dog of Fair Northerners—Dogs as Guides and Protectors of Man—The Dog in Early Religion—Dog Guides of Souls—The Dog of Hades—Dogs and Death—The Scape-dog in Scotland—Souls in Dog Form—Traces of Early Domesticated Dogs—Romans imported British Dogs.

The period we have now reached is regarded by some as that of transition between the Palæolithic and Neolithic Ages, and by others as the Early Neolithic period. It is necessary, therefore, that we should keep in mind that these terms have been to a great extent divested of the significance originally attached to them. The transition period was a lengthy one, extending over many centuries during which great changes occurred. It was much longer than the so-called "Neolithic Age". New races appeared in Europe and introduced new habits of life and thought, new animals appeared and animals formerly hunted by man retreated northward or became extinct; the land sank and rose; a great part of the North Sea and the English Channel was for a time dry land, and trees grew on the plateau now marked by the Dogger Bank during this "Transition Period", and before it had ended the Strait of Dover had widened and England was completely cut off from the Continent.

Compared with these great changes the invention of the polished axe edge seems almost trivial. Yet some writers have regarded this change as being all-important. "On the edge ever since its discovery", writes one of them with enthusiasm, "has depended and probably will depend to the end of time the whole artistic and artificial environment of human existence, in all its infinite varied complexity.... By this discovery was broken down a wall that for untold ages had dammed up a stagnant, unprogressive past, and through the breach were let loose all the potentialities of the future civilization of mankind. It was entirely due to the discovery of the edge that man was enabled, in the course of time, to invent the art of shipbuilding."[42]

This is a very sweeping claim and hardly justified by the evidence that of late years has come to light. Much progress had been achieved before the easy method of polishing supplanted that of secondary working. The so-called Palæolithic implements were not devoid of edges. What really happened was that flint-working was greatly simplified. The discovery was an important one, but it was not due to it alone that great changes in habits of life were introduced. Long before the introduction of the Neolithic industry, the earliest traces of which in Western Europe have been obtained at Campigny near the village of Blangy on the River Bresle, the Magdalenian civilization of the Crô-Magnons had been broken up by the Azilian-Tardenoisian intruders in Central and Western Europe and by the Maglemosians in the Baltic area.

The invading hordes in Spain, so far as can be gathered from rock pictures, made more use of bows and arrows than of spears, and it may be that their social organization was superior to that of the Magdalenians. Their animal "drives" suggest as much. It may be that they were better equipped for organized warfare—if there was warfare—and for hunting by organizing drives than the taller and stronger Crô-Magnons. When they reached the Magdalenian stations they adopted the barbed harpoon, imitating reindeer-horn forms in red-deer horn.

The blond Maglemosians in the Baltic area introduced from Asia the domesticated dog. They were thus able to obtain their food supply with greater ease than did the Solutreans with their laurel-leaf lances, or the Magdalenians with their spears tipped with bone or horn. When man was joined by his faithful ally he met with more success than when he pursued the chase unaided. Withal, he could take greater risks when threatened by the angry bulls of a herd, and operate over more extended tracks of country with less fear of attack by beasts of prey. His dogs warned him of approaching peril and guarded his camp by night.

Hunters who dwelt in caves may have done so partly for protection against lions and bears and wolves that were attracted to hunters' camps by the scent of flesh and blood. No doubt barriers had to be erected to shield men, women, and children in the darkness; and it may be that there were fires and sentinels at cave entrances.

The introduction of the domesticated dog may have influenced the development of religious beliefs. Crô-Magnon hunters appear to have performed ceremonies in the depths of caverns where they painted and carved wild animals, with purpose to obtain power over them. Their masked dances, in which men and women represented wild animals, chiefly beasts of prey, may have had a similar significance. The fact that, during the Transition Period, a cult art passed out of existence, and the caves were no longer centres of culture and political power, may have been directly or indirectly due to the domestication of the dog and the supremacy achieved by the intruders who possessed it.

There can be no doubt that the dog played its part in the development of civilization. As much is suggested by the lore attaching to this animal. It occupies a prominent place in mythology. The dog which guided and protected the hunter in his wanderings was supposed to guide his soul to the other world.

In Ancient Egypt the dog-headed god Anubis was the guide and protector of souls. Apuatua, an early form of Osiris, was a dog god. Yama, the Hindu god of death, as Dharma, god of justice, assumed his dog form to guide the Panadava brothers to Paradise, as is related in the Sanskrit epic the Mahá-bhárata[43]. The god Indra, the Hindu Jupiter, was the "big dog", and the custom still prevails among primitive Indian peoples of torturing a dog by pouring hot oil into its ears so that the "big dog" may hear and send rain. In the Mahá-bhárata there is a story about Indra appearing as a hunter followed by a pack of dogs. As the "Wild Huntsman" the Scandinavian god Odin rides through the air followed by dogs. The dog is in Greek mythology the sentinel of Hades; it figures in a like capacity in the Hades of Northern Mythology. Cuchullin, the Gaelic hero, kills the dog of Hades and takes its place until another dog is found and trained, and that is why he is called "Cu" (the dog) of Culann. A pool in Kildonan, Sutherland, which was reputed to contain a pot of gold, was supposed to be guarded by a big black dog with two heads. A similar legend attaches to Hound's Pool in the parish of Dean Combe, Devonshire. In different parts of the world the dog is the creator and ancestor of the human race, the symbol of kinship, &c. The star Sirius was associated with the dog. In Scotland and Ireland "dog stones" were venerated. A common surviving belief is that dogs howl by night when a sudden death is about to occur. This association of the dog with death is echoed by Theocritus. "Hark!" cries Simaetha, "the dogs are barking through the town. Hecate is at the crossways. Haste, clash the brazen cymbals." The dog-god of Scotland is remembered as an cù sìth ("the supernatural dog"); it is as big as a calf, and by night passes rapidly over land and sea. A black demon-dog—the "Moddey Dhoo"—referred to by Scott in Peveril of the Peak was supposed to haunt Peel Castle in the Isle of Man. A former New Year's day custom in Perthshire was to send away from a house door a scape-dog with the words, "Get away you dog! Whatever death of men or loss of cattle would happen in this house till the end of the present year, may it all light on your head." A similar custom obtained among Western Himalayan peoples. Early man appears to have regarded his faithful companion as a supernatural being. There are Gaelic references to souls appearing in dog form to assist families in time of need. Not only did the dog attack beasts of prey; in Gaelic folk-tales it is the enemy of fairies and demons, and especially cave-haunting demons. Early man's gratitude to and dependence on the dog seems to be reflected in stories of this kind.

When the Baltic peoples, who are believed to be the first "wave" of blond Northerners, moved westward towards Denmark during the period of the "great thaw", they must have been greatly assisted by the domesticated dog, traces of which are found in Maglemosian stations. Bones of dogs have been found in the Danish kitchen middens and in the MacArthur cave at Oban. It may be that the famous breed of British hunting dogs which were in Roman times exported to Italy were descended from those introduced by the Maglemosian hunters. Seven Irish dogs were in the fourth century presented to Symmachus, a Roman consul, by his brother. "All Rome", the grateful recipient wrote, "view them with wonder and thought they must have been brought hither in iron cages."

Great dogs were kept in Ancient Britain and Ireland for protection against wolves as well as for hunting wild animals. The ancient Irish made free use in battle of large fierce hounds. In the folk-stories of Scotland dogs help human beings to attack and overcome supernatural beings. Dogs were the enemies of the fairies, mermaids, &c.

Dog gods figure on the ancient sculptured stones of Scotland. The names of the Irish heroes Cuchullin and Con-chobar were derived from those of dog deities. "Con" is the genitive of "Cu" (dog).

CHAPTER VII
Ancient Mariners Reach Britain

Reindeer in Scotland—North Sea and English Channel Land-bridges—Early River Rafts and River Boats—Breaking of Land-bridges—Coast Erosion—Tilbury Man—Where were first Boats Invented?—Ancient Boats in Britain—"Dug-out" Canoes—Imitations of Earlier Papyri and Skin Boats—Cork Plug in Ancient Clyde Boat—Early Swedish Boats—An African Link—Various Types of British Boats—Daring Ancient Mariners—The Veneti Seafarers—Attractions of Early Britain for Colonists.

The Maglemosian (Baltic) and Azilian (Iberian) peoples, who reached and settled in Britain long before the introduction of the Neolithic industry, appear, as has been shown, to have crossed the great land-bridge, which is now marked by the Dogger Bank, and the narrowed land-bridge that connected England and France. No doubt they came at first in small bands, wandering along the river banks and founding fishing communities, following the herds of red deer and wild cows that had moved northward, and seeking flints, &c. The Crô-Magnons, whose civilization the new intruders had broken up on the Continent, were already in Britain, where the reindeer lingered for many centuries after they had vanished from France. The reindeer moss still grows in the north of Scotland. Bones and horns of the reindeer have been found in this area in association with human remains as late as of the Roman period. In the twelfth century the Norsemen hunted reindeer in Caithness.[44] Cæsar refers to the reindeer in the Hercynian forest of Germany (Gallic War, VI, 26).

The early colonists of fair Northerners who introduced the Maglemosian culture into Britain from the Baltic area could not have crossed the North Sea land-bridge without the aid of rafts or boats. Great broad rivers were flowing towards the north. The Elbe and the Weser joined one another near the island of Heligoland, and received tributaries from marshy valleys until a long estuary wider than is the Wash at present was formed. Another long river flowed northward from the valley of the Zuyder Zee, the mouth of which has been traced on the north-east of the Dogger Bank. The Rhine reached the North Sea on the south-west of the Dogger Bank, off Flamborough Head; its tributaries included the Meuse and the Thames. The Humber and the rivers flowing at present into the Wash were united before entering the North Sea between the mouth of the Rhine and the coast of East Riding.

The Dogger Bank was then a plateau. Trawlers, as has been stated, sometimes lift from its surface in their trawl nets lumps of peat, which they call "moor-log", and also the bones of wild animals, including the wild ox, the wild horse, red deer, reindeer, the elk, the bear, the wolf, the hyæna, the beaver, the walrus, the woolly rhinoceros, and the hairy mammoth. In the peat have been found the remains of the white birch, the hazel, sallow, and willow, seeds of bog-bean, fragments of fern, &c. All the plants have a northern range. In some pieces of peat have been found plants and insects that still flourish in Britain.[45]

The easiest crossing to Britain was over the English Channel land-bridge. It was ultimately cut through by the English Channel river, so that the dark Azilian-Tardenoisian peoples from Central and Western Europe and the fair Maglemosians must have required and used rafts or boats before polished implements of Neolithic type came into use. In time the North Sea broke through the marshes of the river land to the east of the Thames Estuary and joined the waters of the English Channel. The Strait of Dover was then formed. At first it may have been narrow enough for animals to swim across or, at any rate, for the rude river boats or rafts of the early colonists to be paddled over in safety between tides. Gradually, however, the strait grew wider and wider; the chalk cliffs, long undermined by boring molluscs and scouring shingle, were torn down by great billows during winter storms.

It may be that for a long period after the North Sea and English Channel were united, the Dogger Bank remained an island, and that there were other islands between Heligoland and the English coast. Pliny, who had served with the Roman army in Germany, writing in the first century of our era, refers to twenty-three islands between the Texel and the Eider in Schleswig-Holstein. Seven of these have since vanished. The west coast of Schleswig has, during the past eighteen hundred years, suffered greatly from erosion, and alluvial plains that formerly yielded rich harvests are now represented by sandbanks. The Goodwin Sands, which stretch for about ten miles off the Kentish coast, were once part of the fertile estate of Earl Godwin which was destroyed and engulfed by a great storm towards the end of the eleventh century. The Gulf of Zuyder Zee was formerly a green plain with many towns and villages. Periodic inundations since the Roman period have destroyed flourishing Dutch farms and villages and eaten far into the land. There are records of storm-floods that drowned on one occasion 20,000, and on another no fewer than 100,000 inhabitants.[46] It is believed that large tracts of land, the remnants of the ancient North Sea land-bridge, have been engulfed since about 3000 b.c., as a result not merely of erosion but the gradual submergence of the land. This date is suggested by Mr. Clement Reid.

"The estimate", he says, "may have to be modified as we obtain better evidence; but it is as well to realize clearly that we are not dealing with a long period of great geological antiquity; we are dealing with times when the Egyptian, Babylonian, and Minoan (Cretan) civilizations flourished. Northern Europe was then probably barbarous, and metals had not come into use;[47] but the amber trade of the Baltic was probably in full swing. Rumours of any great disaster, such as the submergence of thousands of square miles and the displacement of large populations, might spread far and wide along the trade routes." It may be that the legend of the Lost Atlantis was founded on reports of such a disaster, that must have occurred when areas like the Dogger Bank were engulfed. It may be too that the gradual wasting away of lands that have long since vanished propelled migrations of peoples towards the smiling coasts of England. According to Ammianus the Druids stated that some of the inhabitants of Gaul were descendants of refugees from sea-invaded areas.

The gradual sinking of the land and the process of coast erosion has greatly altered the geography of England. The beach on which Julius Cæsar landed has long since vanished, the dwellings of the ancient Azilian and Maglemosian colonists, who reached England in post-Glacial times, have been sunk below the English Channel. When Tilbury Docks were being excavated Roman remains were found embedded in clay several feet below high-water mark. Below several layers of peat and mud, and immediately under a bank of sand in which were fragments of decomposed wood, was found the human skeleton known as "Tilbury man". The land in this area was originally 80 feet above its present level.[48] But while England was sinking Scotland was rising. The MacArthur cave at Oban, in which Azilian hunters and fishermen made their home on the sea-beach, is now about 30 feet above the old sea-level.

Before Dover Strait had been widened by the gradual sinking of the land and the process of coast erosion, and before the great islands had vanished from the southern part of the North Sea, the early hunters and fishermen could have experienced no great difficulty in reaching England. It is possible that the Azilian, Tardenoisian, and Maglemosian peoples had made considerable progress in the art of navigation. Traces of the Tardenoisian industry have been obtained in Northern Egypt, along the ancient Libyan coast of North Africa where a great deal of land has been submerged, and especially at Tunis, and in Algiers, in Italy, and in England and Scotland, as has been noted. There were boats on the Mediterranean at a very early period. The island of Crete was reached long before the introduction of copper-working by seafarers who visited the island of Melos, and there obtained obsidian (natural glass) from which sharp implements were fashioned. Egyptian mariners, who dwelt on the Delta coast, imported cedar, not only from Lebanon but from Morocco, as has been found from the evidence afforded by mummies packed with the sawdust of cedar from the Atlas Mountains.[49] When this trade with Morocco began it is impossible to say with certainty. Long before 3000 b.c., however, the Egyptians were building boats that were fitted with masts and sails. The ancient mariners were active as explorers and traders before implements of copper came into use.

Here we touch on a very interesting problem. Where were boats first invented and the art of navigation developed? Rafts and floats formed by tying together two trees or, as in Egypt, two bundles of reeds, were in use at a very early period in various countries. In Babylonia the "kufa", a great floating basket made watertight with pitch or covered with skins, was an early invention. It was used as it still is for river ferry boats. But ships were not developed from "kufas". The dug-out canoe is one of the early prototypes of the modern ocean-going vessel. It reached this country before the Neolithic industry was introduced, and during that period when England was slowly sinking and Scotland was gradually rising. Dug-out canoes continued to come during the so-called "Neolithic" stage of culture ere yet the sinking and rising of land had ceased. "That Neolithic man lived in Scotland during the formation of this beach (the 45-to 50-foot beach) is proved", wrote the late Professor James Geikie, "by the frequent occurrence in it of his relics. At Perth, for example, a dug-out canoe of pine was met with towards the bottom of the carse clays; and similar finds have frequently been recorded from the contemporaneous deposits in the valleys of the Forth and the Clyde."[50]

How did early man come to invent the dug-out? Not only did he hollow out a tree trunk by the laborious process of burning and by chipping with a flint adze, he dressed the trunk so that his boat could be balanced on the water. The early shipbuilders had to learn, and did learn, for themselves, "the values of length and beam, of draught and sweet lines, of straight keel; with high stem to breast a wave and high stern to repel a following sea". The fashioning of a sea-worthy, or even a river-worthy boat, must have been in ancient times as difficult a task as was the fashioning of the first aeroplane in our own day. Many problems had to be solved, many experiments had to be made, and, no doubt, many tragedies took place before the first safe model-boat was paddled across a river. The early experimenters may have had shapes of vessels suggested to them by fish and birds, and especially by the aquatic birds that paddled past them on the river breast with dignity and ease. But is it probable that the first experiments were made with trees? Did early man undertake the laborious task of hewing down tree after tree to shape new models, until in the end he found on launching the correctly shaped vessel that its balance was perfect? Or was the dug-out canoe an imitation of a boat already in existence, just as a modern ship built of steel or concrete is an imitation of the earlier wooden ships? The available evidence regarding this important phase of the shipping problem tends to show that, before the dug-out was invented, boats were constructed of light material. Ancient Egypt was the earliest shipbuilding country in the world, and all ancient ships were modelled on those that traded on the calm waters of the Nile. Yet Egypt is an almost treeless land. There the earliest boats—broad, light skiffs—were made by binding together long bundles of the reeds of papyrus. Ropes were twisted from papyrus as well as from palm fibre.[51] It would appear that, before dug-outs were made, the problems of boat construction were solved by those who had invented papyri skiffs and skin boats. In the case of the latter the skins were stretched round a framework, sewed together and made watertight with pitch. We still refer to the "seams" and the "skin" of a boat.

The art of boat-building spread far and wide from the area of origin. Until recently the Chinese were building junks of the same type as they did four or five hundred years earlier. These junks have been compared by more than one writer to the deep-sea boats of the Egyptian Empire period. The Papuans make "dug-outs" and carve eyes on the prows as did the ancient Egyptians and as do the Maltese, Chinese, &c., in our own day. Even when only partly hollowed, the Papuan boats have perfect balance in the water as soon as they are launched.[52] The Polynesians performed religious ceremonies when cutting down trees and constructing boats.[53] In their incantations, &c., the lore of boat-building was enshrined and handed down. The Polynesian boat was dedicated to the mo-o (dragon-god). We still retain a relic of an ancient religious ceremony when a bottle of wine is broken on the bows of a vessel just as it is being launched.

After the Egyptians were able to secure supplies of cedar wood from the Atlas Mountains or Lebanon, by drifting rafts of lashed trees along the coast line, they made dug-out vessels of various shapes, as can be seen in the tomb pictures of the Old Kingdom period. These dug-outs were apparently modelled on the earlier papyri and skin boats. A ship with a square sail spread to the wind is depicted on an Ancient Egyptian two-handed jar in the British Museum, which is of pre-dynastic age and may date to anything like 4000 or 5000 b.c. At that remote period the art of navigation was already well advanced, no doubt on account of the experience gained on the calm waters of the Nile.