The Antiquity of Man Part 16

Mr. Frere then goes on to explain that the strata in which the flints occur are disposed horizontally, and do not lie at the foot of any higher ground, so that portions of them must have been removed when the adjoining valley was hollowed out. If the author had not mistaken the freshwater sh.e.l.ls a.s.sociated with the tools for marine species, there would have been nothing to correct in his account of the geology of the district, for he distinctly perceived that the strata in which the implements were embedded had, since that time, undergone very extensive denudation.*

(* Frere, "Archaeologia" volume 13 1800 page 206.)

Specimens of the flint spear-heads, sent to London by Mr. Frere, are still preserved in the British Museum, and others are in the collection of the Society of Antiquaries.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 24. Position of Flint Weapons]

(FIGURE 24. SECTION SHOWING THE POSITION OF THE FLINT WEAPONS AT HOXNE, NEAR DISS, SUFFOLK.

See Prestwich "Philosophical Transactions" Plate 11 1860.)

1. Gravel of Gold Brook, a tributary of the Waveney.

2. Higher-level gravel overlying the freshwater deposit.

3 and 4. Sand and gravel, with freshwater sh.e.l.ls, and flint implements, and bones of mammalia.

5. Peaty and clayey beds, with same fossils.

6. Boulder clay or glacial drift.

7. Sand and gravel below boulder clay.

8. Chalk with flints.)

Mr. Prestwich's attention was called by Mr. Evans to these weapons, as well as to Mr. Frere's memoir after his return from Amiens in 1859, and he lost no time in visiting Hoxne, a village five miles eastward of Diss. It is not a little remarkable that he should have found, after a lapse of sixty years, that the extraction of clay was still going on in the same brick-pit. Only a few months before his arrival, two flint instruments had been dug out of the clay, one from a depth of 7 and the other of 10 feet from the surface. Others have since been disinterred from undisturbed beds of gravel in the same pit. Mr. Amyot of Diss has also obtained from the underlying freshwater strata the astragalus of an elephant, and bones of the deer and horse; but although many of the old implements have recently been discovered in situ in regular strata and preserved by Sir Edward Kerrison, no bones of extinct mammalia seem as yet to have been actually seen in the same stratum with one of the tools.

By reference to the annexed section, the geologist will see that the basin-shaped hollow a, b, c has been filled up gradually with the freshwater strata 3, 4, 5, after the same cavity a, b, c had been previously excavated out of the more ancient boulder clay Number 6. The relative position of these formations will be better understood when I have described in the twelfth chapter the structure of Norfolk and Suffolk as laid open in the sea-cliffs at Mundesley, about 30 miles distant from Hoxne, in a north-north-east direction.

I examined the deposits at Hoxne in 1860, when I had the advantage of being accompanied by the Reverend J. Gunn and the Reverend S.W. King.

In the loamy beds 3 and 4, Figure 24, we observed the common river sh.e.l.l Valvata piscinalis in great numbers. With it, but much more rare, were Limnaea pal.u.s.tris, Planorbis albus, P. Spirorbis, Succinea putris, Bithynia tentaculata, Cyclas cornea; and Mr. Prestwich mentions Cyclas amnica and fragments of a Unio, besides several land sh.e.l.ls. In the black peaty ma.s.s Number 5, fragments of wood of the oak, yew, and fir have been recognised. The flint weapons which I have seen from Hoxne are so much more perfect, and have their cutting edge so much sharper than those from the valley of the Somme, that they seem neither to have been used by Man, nor to have been rolled in the bed of a river. The opinion of Mr. Frere, therefore, that there may have been a manufactory of weapons on the spot, appears probable.

FLINT IMPLEMENTS AT ICKLINGHAM IN SUFFOLK.

In another part of Suffolk, at Icklingham, in the valley of the Lark, below Bury St. Edmund's, there is a bed of gravel, in which teeth of Elephas primigenius and several flint tools, chiefly of a lance-head form, have been found. I have twice visited the spot, which has been correctly described by Mr. Prestwich.*

(* "Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society" volume 17 1861, page 364.)

The section of the Bedford tool-bearing alluvium, given in Figure 23, may serve to ill.u.s.trate that of Icklingham, if we subst.i.tute Chalk for Oolite, and the river Lark for the Ouse. In both cases, the present bed of the river is about 30 feet below the level of the old gravel, and the Chalk hill, which bounds the valley of the Lark on the right side, is capped like the Oolite of Biddenham by boulder clay, which rises to the height of 100 feet above the Lark. About twelve years ago, a large erratic block, above 4 feet in diameter, was dug out of the boulder clay at Icklingham, which I found to consist of a hard siliceous schist, which must have come from a remote region. The tool-bearing gravel here, as in the case to which it has been compared near Bedford, is proved to be newer than the glacial drift, by containing pebbles of basalt and other rocks derived from that formation.

CHAPTER 10. -- CAVERN DEPOSITS, AND PLACES OF SEPULTURE OF THE PLEISTOCENE PERIOD.

Flint Implements in Cave containing Hyaena and other extinct Mammalia in Somersets.h.i.+re.

Caves of the Gower Peninsula in South Wales.

Rhinoceros hemitoechus.

Ossiferous Caves near Palermo.

Sicily once part of Africa.

Rise of Bed of the Mediterranean to the Height of three hundred Feet in the Human Period in Sardinia.

Burial-place of Pleistocene Date of Aurignac in the South of France.

Rhinoceros tichorhinus eaten by Man.

M. Lartet on extinct Mammalia and Works of Art found in the Aurignac Cave.

Relative Antiquity of the same considered.

WORKS OF ART a.s.sOCIATED WITH EXTINCT MAMMALIA IN A CAVERN IN SOMERSETs.h.i.+RE.

The only British cave from which implements resembling those of Amiens have been obtained, since the attention of geologists has been awakened to the importance of minutely observing the position of such relics relatively to the a.s.sociated fossil mammalia, is that recently opened near Wells in Somersets.h.i.+re. It occurs near the cave of Wookey Hole, from the mouth of which the river Axe issues on the southern flanks of the Mendips. No one had suspected that on the left side of the ravine, through which the river flows after escaping from its subterranean channel, there were other caves and fissures concealed beneath the green sward of the steep sloping bank. About ten years ago, a ca.n.a.l was made, several hundred yards in length, for the purpose of leading the waters of the Axe to a paper-mill, now occupying the middle of the ravine. In carrying out this work, about 12 feet of the left bank was cut away, and a cavernous fissure, choked up to the roof with ossiferous loam, was then, for the first time, exposed to view. This great cavity, originally 9 feet high and 36 wide, traversed the Dolomitic Conglomerate; and fragments of that rock, some angular and others water-worn, were scattered through the red mud of the cave, in which fossil remains were abundant. For an account of them and the position they occupied we are indebted to Mr. Dawkins, F.G.S., who, in company with Mr. Williamson, explored the cavern in 1859, and obtained from it the bones of the Hyaena spelaea in such numbers as to lead him to conclude that the cavern had for a long time been a hyaena's den. Among the accompanying animals found fossil in the same bone-earth, were observed Elephas primigenius, Rhinoceros tichorhinus, Ursus spelaeus, Bos primigenius, Megaceros hibernicus, Cervus tarandus (and other species of Cervus), Felis spelaea, Canis lupus, Canis vulpes, and teeth and bones of the genus Equus in great numbers.

Intermixed with the above fossil bones were some arrowheads, made of bone, and many chipped flints, and chipped pieces of chert, a white or bleached flint weapon of the spearhead Amiens type, which was taken out of the undisturbed matrix by Mr. Williamson himself, together with a hyaena's tooth, showing that Man had either been contemporaneous with or had preceded the extinct fauna. After penetrating 34 feet from the entrance, Mr. Dawkins found the cave bifurcating into two branches, one of which was vertical. By this rent, perhaps, some part of the contents of the cave may have been introduced.*

(* Boyd Dawkins, "Proceedings of the Geological Society"

January 1862.)

When I examined the spot in 1860, after I had been shown some remains of the hyaena collected there, I felt convinced that a complete revolution must have taken place in the topography of the district since the time of the extinct quadrupeds. I was not aware at the time that flint tools had been met with in the same bone-deposit.

CAVES OF GOWER IN GLAMORGANs.h.i.+RE, SOUTH WALES.

The ossiferous caves of the peninsula of Gower in Glamorgans.h.i.+re have been diligently explored of late years by Dr. Falconer and Lieutenant-Colonel E.R. Wood, who have thoroughly investigated the contents of many which were previously unknown. Among these Dr.

Falconer's skilled eye has recognised the remains of almost every quadruped which he had elsewhere found fossil in British caves: in some places the Elephas primigenius, accompanied by its usual companion, the Rhinoceros tichorhinus, in others Elephas antiquus, a.s.sociated with Rhinoceros hemitoechus, Falconer; the extinct animals being often embedded, as in the Belgian caves, in the same matrix with species now living in Europe, such as the common badger (Meles taxus), the common wolf, and the fox.

In a cavernous fissure called the Raven's Cliff, teeth of several individuals of Hippopotamus major, both young and old, were found; and this in a district where there is now scarce a rill of running water, much less a river in which such quadrupeds could swim. In one of the caves, called Spritsail Tor, bones of the elephants above named were observed, with a great many other quadrupeds of Recent and extinct species.

From one fissure, called Bosco's Den, no less than one thousand antlers of the reindeer, chiefly of the variety called Cervus Guettardi, were extracted by the persevering exertions of Colonel Wood, who estimated that several hundred more still remained in the bone-earth of the same rent.

They were mostly shed horns, and of young animals; and had been washed into the rent with other bones, and with angular fragments of limestone, and all enveloped in the same ochreous mud. Among the other bones, which were not numerous, were those of the cave-bear, wolf, fox, ox, stag, and field-mouse.

But the discovery of most importance, as bearing on the subject of the present work, is the occurrence in a newly-discovered cave, called Long Hole, by Colonel Wood, in 1861, of the remains of two species of rhinoceros, R. tichorhinus and R. hemitoechus, Falconer, in an undisturbed deposit, in the lower part of which were some well-shaped flint knives, evidently of human workmans.h.i.+p. It is clear from their position that Man was coeval with these two species. We have elsewhere independent proofs of his co-existence with every other species of the cave-fauna of Glamorgans.h.i.+re; but this is the first well-authenticated example of the occurrence of R. hemitoechus in connection with human implements.

In the fossil fauna of the valley of the Thames, Rhinoceros leptorhinus was mentioned as occurring at Gray's Thurrock with Elephas antiquus.

Dr. Falconer, in a memoir which he is now preparing for the press on the European Pliocene and Pleistocene species of the genus Rhinoceros, has shown that, under the above name of R. leptorhinus, three distinct species have been confounded by Cuvier, Owen, and other palaeontologists:--

1. R. megarhinus, Christol, being the original and typical R.

leptorhinus of Cuvier, founded on Cortesi's Monte Zago cranium, and the ONLY Pliocene, or Pleistocene European species, that had not a nasal septum.--Gray's Thurrock, etc.

2. R. hemitoechus, Falconer, in which the ossification of the septum dividing the nostrils is incomplete in the middle, besides other cranial and dental characters distinguis.h.i.+ng it from R. tichorhinus, accompanies Elephas antiquus in most of the oldest British bone-caves, such as Kirkdale, Cefn, Durdham Down, Minchin Hole, and other Gower caverns--also found at Clacton, in Ess.e.x, and in Northamptons.h.i.+re.

3. R. etruscus, Falconer, a comparatively slight and slender form, also with an incomplete bony septum,* occurs deep in the Val d'Arno deposits, and in the "Forest bed," and superimposed blue clays, with lignite, of the Norfolk coast, but nowhere as yet found in the ossiferous caves in Britain.

(* Falconer, "Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society"

volume 15 1859 page 602.)

Dr. Falconer announced in 1860 his opinion that the filling up of the Gower caves in South Wales took place after the deposition of the marine boulder clay,* an opinion in harmony with what we have since learnt from the section of the gravels near Bedford, given above (Figure 23), where a fauna corresponding to that of the Welsh caves characterises the ancient alluvium, and is shown to be clearly post-glacial, in the sense of being posterior in date to the boulder-clay of the midland counties.

(* Ibid. volume 16 1860 page 491.)

In the same sense the late Edward Forbes declared, in 1846, his conviction that not only the Cervus megaceros, but also the mammoth and other extinct pachyderms and carnivora, had lived in Britain in post-glacial times.*

(* "Memoir of the Geological Survey" pages 394 to 397.)

The Gower caves in general have their floors strewed over with sand, containing marine sh.e.l.ls, all of living species; and there are raised beaches on the adjoining coast, and other geological signs of great alteration in the relative level of land and sea, since that country was inhabited by the extinct mammalia, some of which, as we have seen, were certainly coeval with Man.