Chapter XXV: Conclusion: As to the Relationships of the Palæolithic Races

Thus in southern, central, and northern Europe the close of Upper Palæolithic times is marked by the invasion of new Eurasiatic races, all in a Pre-Neolithic stage of industry and art. It is not improbable that these races were advance waves from the same geographic regions as the Neolithic tribes which followed them.

From the earliest Palæolithic to Neolithic times it does not appear that western Europe was ever a centre of human evolution in the sense that it gave rise to a single new species of man. The main racial evolution and the earlier and later branches of the human family were established in the east and successively found their way westward; nor is there at present any ground for believing that any very prolonged evolution or transformation of human types occurred in western Europe.

We should regard as wholly unproved the notion that either of these Palæolithic races of western Europe gave rise to others which succeeded them in geologic time; the only sequence of this sort to which some degree of probability may be attached is that the Heidelberg race was ancestral to the Neanderthal race.

In most instances, such races as the Piltdown, the Crô-Magnon, the Brünn, the Furfooz-Grenelle, and the Mediterranean arrived fully formed, with all their mental and physical attributes and tendencies very distinctly developed. There is some evidence, but not of a very conclusive kind, that the modification of certain of these races in western Europe was partly in the nature of a decline; this was apparently the case both with the Neanderthals and with the Crô-Magnons.

We may therefore imagine that the family tree or lines of descent of the races of the Old Stone Age consisted of a number of entirely separate branches, which had been completely formed in the great Eurasiatic continent, a land mass infinitely larger and more capable of producing a variety of races than the diminutive peninsular area of western Europe.

A review of these races in descending order, in respect to stature, the cephalic index, and brain capacity, is presented in the following table:

+-------------------------------------------------------------------
| |Frontal| Height|Cephalic| Brain | Height |
| | Angle | of | Index |Capacity | |
| | | Skull | | | |
|---------------------|-------|-------|--------|---------|---------|
|RECENT. | | | | c.cm. |ft. in. |
| (_H. sapiens_). | | | | | |
| European | | | | | |
| (average). | 90 | 59 | ... |1400-1500| 5 7 |
| | | | | | |
|UPPER PALÆOLITHIC. | | | | | |
| Ofnet Race | | | | | |
| (brachycephalic) | ... | ... | 86.21 | 1400 | ... |
| Ofnet Race | | | | | |
| (dolichocephalic)| ... | ... | 70.50 | 1500 | ... |
| Crô-Magnon Race | | | | | |
| (old man of | | | | | |
| Crô-Magnon type) | ... | ... | 73.76 | 1590 | 6 |
| Grimaldi |} | {|?63- |1775-1880|5 10-1/2-|
| (Crô-Magnons) |} ... | ... {|?76.27 | ... | 6 4-1/2|
| Chancelade | ... | ... | 72.02 | 1700 | 4 11 |
| Aurignac | ... | ... | 65.7 | ... | 5 3 |
| Grimaldi Race. | | | | | |
| Grimaldi type | | | | | |
| (negroid) | ... | ... | 69.27 | 1580 | 5 1 |
| Brünn Race. | | | | | |
| Brünn I | 75 | 51.22 | 65.7 or| 1350 | ... |
| | | | 68.2 | | |
|LOWER PALÆOLITHIC. | | | | | |
| Neanderthal Race | | | | | |
| (_H. | | | | | |
| Neanderthalensis_).| | | | | |
| La Chapelle | 65 | 40.5 | 75 | 1626 | 5 3 |
| Spy II | 67 | 44.3 | 75.7 |? 1723 | 5 3 |
| Spy I | 57.5 | 40.9 | 70 |? 1562 | 5 4 |
| La Ferrassie I | ... | ... | ... | ... | 5 5 |
| La Ferrassie II | ... | ... | ... | ... | 4 10-1/2|
| La Quina | ... | ... | ... | 1367 | ... |
| | | | |(approx.)| |
| Krapina D | 66 | 42.2 |?83.7 | ... | ... |
| Neanderthal | 62 | 40.4 | 73.9 | 1408 | 5 4 |
| Gibraltar | 66 or| 40 | 77.9 | 1250 or| ... |
| | 73-74| | | 1296 | |
| Pre-Neanderthaloids| | | | | |
| Piltdown Race. | | | | | |
| Piltdown | ... | ... |?78 or |? 1300 | ... |
| | | |?79 |? 1500 | |
| Trinil Race | | | | | |
| (_Pithecanthropus_)| 52.5 | 34.2 | 73.4 or| 850-1000| 5 7 |
| | | | 70 | 900 | |
|ANTHROPOID APES. | | | | | |
| Apes (maximum) | 56 | 37.7 | ... | 600 | ... |
| | | | | | |
| | | | | | |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------

------------+
|Comparative|
| Length of |
|Arm and Leg|
|-----------|
| |
| |
| |
| 69.73% |
| |
| |
| |
| ... |
| |
| ... |
| |
| |
| ... |
|66.05%-69% |
| |
| ... |
| ... |
| |
| |
| 63.12% |
| |
| ... |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| ... |
| ... |
| ... |
|? 68% |
| 68% |
| ... |
| |
| ... |
| ... |
| ... |
| |
| |
| |
| ... |
| |
| |
| ... |
| |
| |
| 104% |
|(chimpanzee|
| minimum.)|
------------+

The chief authorities for these measurements are Schwalbe, Dubois,
Keith, Smith, Woodward, Boule, Sollas, Sera, Klaatsch, Fraipont,
Makowsky, Verneau, Testut, and Broca.

The migration routes of invasion of the successive Lower Palæolithic races--the Piltdown, the Heidelberg, and the Neanderthal--are entirely unknown; we can only infer from the wide distribution of the Chellean and Acheulean cultures to the south, along the northern African coast, as well as to the east, that these races may have had a southerly or circum-Mediterranean origin. This does not mean that either of these Lower Palæolithic races were of negroid or Ethiopian affinity, because the Neanderthals show absolutely no negroid characters. In fact, throughout all Palæolithic time the solitary instance of the two Grimaldi skeletons furnishes the sole anatomical evidence we possess of the entrance of a negroid people into Europe, which contrasts widely with the overwhelming evidence of the dominance in western Europe first of the non-negroid Neanderthals, and then of the Crô-Magnons who probably belonged to the Caucasian stock.

The evidence as to the sources and migrations of the Upper Palæolithic races is also indirect. The theory of the Crô-Magnons entering Europe by the southerly or Mediterranean route we have seen to rest upon purely cultural or industrial grounds, namely, the spread of the Aurignacian industry around the Mediterranean shores. On the other hand, the succeeding culture, the Solutrean, and the succeeding race to enter Europe, the Brünn, both appear to be of central or of direct easterly origin. It is only toward the close of the Upper Palæolithic that another southerly or Mediterranean invasion occurs, bringing in the microlithic Tardenoisian culture, which, although anatomical evidence is wanting, would appear to be an advance wave of the great invasion of the true 'Mediterranean' race. During the Upper Palæolithic Epoch another invasion apparently occurs from the east along the central migration route, namely, that of the broad-headed Furfooz-Grenelle races.

Thus in surveying the whole period of the Old Stone Age we find that there is some evidence for the theory of an alternation of southerly, of easterly, and finally of northeasterly invasions of races bringing in new industries and ideas.

TRANSITION TO THE NEOLITHIC. THE CAMPIGNIAN. THE ROBENHAUSIAN

Apart from the special and somewhat debated question of the place of the Campignian culture in the prehistory of Europe we may close our survey of the Upper Palæolithic by pointing out some of its contrasts with the Neolithic.

The arrival of the Neolithic cultures and industries in western Europe marks one of the most profound changes in all prehistory and introduces us to a new period which must be treated in an entirely different historic spirit. This new era began between 7,000 to 10,000 years ago, or with the close of the Daun stage, the last geologic feature of Postglacial times.

There are two theories regarding the close of Upper Palæolithic and the beginning of Neolithic times. The older theory, which still has some adherents, is that the Upper Palæolithic races and industries suddenly gave way before the arrival of new and superior races bringing in the Neolithic culture. The newer theory is that there are evidences of gradual transfusions from the Upper Palæolithic into the Neolithic cultures and that these are found in some of the oldest Neolithic sites.

In 1898 there appeared an article(21) by Philippe Salmon, d'Ault du Mesnil, and Capitan, entitled, "Le Campignien," defending the theory of an early and transitional Neolithic stage, the _Campignian_.(22) The type station of this early culture was pointed out by Salmon in 1886; it lies a little more than a mile northwest of the village of Blangy, on the River Bresle, on a site well placed for natural defense. The remains of the hut-dwellings of this camp and of various industrial objects appear to indicate that this station belongs to the earliest phase of the Neolithic Period. These Campignians owe little to the culture or industry of the races which previously occupied this region of western Europe; they are entire strangers, purely Neolithic in type.

While this is the age of polished, as distinguished from chipped, stone, the axe (_hache_) of polished stone is still very rare in the Campignian. There prevail flaked flint types common to all the previous stages of the Stone Age, such as the knives (_couteaux_), planers (_grattoirs_), and spear or dart heads (_pointes de sagaie_), but we notice the appearance of two entirely new flint implements: first, the triangular knife or stone hatchet (_tranchet_), of the type (Fig. 264) common in the Danish kitchen-middens; this knife has a broad, sharp cutting edge flaked on one side; second (Fig. 265), there is a sort of elongated axe or pick (_pic_) with chipped sides and an end more or less conical in shape.(23) These people also made use of large flakes of flint. If we regard the Campignian as a prolonged industrial stage in northern Europe, it certainly precedes the appearance of abundant axe heads of polished flint. In France it seems to appear occasionally as a local phase of the Neolithic.

The prevailing opinion at present is that the Campignian distinctly precedes the typical Neolithic of the Swiss lake-dwellings, a stage known as the _Robenhausian_. Thus the Neolithic culture becomes fully established in the period of the Swiss Lake Dwellings, remains of which are found at Moosseedorf, Wauwyl, Concise on Lake Neufchâtel, and Robenhausen on Lake Pfaeffikon. The latter is the _Robenhausian_ type station.

DISTINCTIVE FEATURES OF THE NEOLITHIC EPOCH

The first of these is the presence of implements of polished stone which find their way gradually into western Europe. The neoliths at first are greatly outnumbered by chipped and flaked implements, and some of the latter show a survival of the familiar types of the Old Stone Age, while others belong to entirely distinct types which had an independent development in the far East.

The chief economic change is seen in the rudimentary knowledge of agriculture and in the use of a variety of plants and seeds, accompanied by the gradual appearance of implements for the preparation of the soil and for harvesting the crops. This new source of food supply leads to the establishment of permanent stations and camps and more or less to the abandonment of nomadic modes of life. Near the ancient camp sites and villages, therefore, are found implements for the preparation of skins and hides, because the chase was still maintained for purposes of clothing as well as for food.

Still more distinctive of the Neolithic is the introduction of pottery, which is at first used in the preparation of food. In the hearths or kitchen-middens and in the refuse heaps of the camps we no longer find evidence of the splitting of the jaws of mammals and of the long and short bones of the limbs, or even of the larger foot bones, in search of marrow, which is such a universal feature of the Upper Palæolithic deposits.

The artistic impulse of the north is very crude and naturalistic. In the Spanish peninsula, accompanying and following the schematic period described in the early part of this chapter, there was a long stage of development in which men were painting on rocks, mostly in the form of silhouettes, naturalistic figures of animals and of people.(24)

The presence of the moose in these drawings concurs with that of the two bison represented in the cavern of Cogul and would tend to indicate that these paintings belong to Upper Palæolithic times, although it is now considered that they are of early Neolithic age. The character of these animal designs is totally different from that of the Magdalenian period in the north and is analogous rather to that of the Bushmen of South Africa. The authors of these frescos represent not only the ibex, stag, and wild cattle but also the horse, moose, fallow deer, wolf, and occasionally the birds. There are many features in this art which show its absolute independence of origin from that of the Magdalenian of the north, among them the frequent presence of composition and the almost invariable presence of human figures.

The frescos in the Spanish caverns of Alpera and of Cogul recall those of southern France but are almost always grouped in series of the chase, of encampment, and perhaps of war. This frequency of human figures, the representations of the bow and arrow, and the presence of a small animal which may be recognized as the domesticated dog are indications of an entirely distinct race coming from the south and bringing in a new spirit in art which has no relation whatever to that of the Magdalenian.

NEOLITHIC MAMMALIAN LIFE

Even in the oldest Neolithic deposits no trace of the horse as an object of food appears. The domestication of this animal was introduced from the east, and thus it ceased to be an object of the chase. The newly arriving tribes were undoubtedly attracted by the abundance of horses, both of the forest and Celtic types, which had survived from Upper Palæolithic times. A very distinctive feature of the modern horses, however, should be mentioned, that is, the presence of a forelock covering the face, no trace of which is indicated in any of the Upper Palæolithic carvings or engravings.

The wild animal life of western Europe at this time is a direct survival of the great Eurasiatic forest and meadow fauna which we have traced from the earliest Palæolithic times. It includes the bison, the long-horned urus, the stag, the roe-deer, the moose, the wild boar, the forest horse, the Celtic horse, the beaver, the hare, and the squirrel. The fallow deer (_Cervus dama_) also appears more abundantly. Among the carnivora are the brown bear, the badger, the marten, the otter, the wolf, the fox, the wildcat, and the wolverene. The lion has disappeared entirely from western Europe. The reindeer survives only in the north.

As observed above, two of these wild animals were early chosen by the invaders for domestication, namely, the plateau or Celtic horse and the forest horse. The former type is found in the Neolithic deposits of Essex, England. The wild urus (_Bos primigenius_) was hunted but was not domesticated.

Two new varieties of domestic cattle appear, neither of which has been previously observed in western Europe. The first of these is the 'Celtic shorthorn' (_Bos longifrons_), the probable ancestor of the small breeds of British short-horned and hornless cattle. The second is the 'longhorn' (_Bos taurus_), which shows some points of resemblance to the 'urus' (_Bos primigenius_) but is not directly related to it. Direct wild ancestors of this latter animal are said to occur in the Pleistocene of Italy. A new type of pig also appears, the so-called turf pig (_Sus scrofa palustris_).

The Neolithic invaders, or men of the New Stone Age, thus brought with them, or domesticated from among the animals which they found in the forests of western Europe, a great variety of the same types of animals as those domesticated to-day, namely, cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, horses, and dogs.

THE PREHISTORIC AND HISTORIC RACES OF EUROPE

Before the close of Neolithic times all the direct ancestors of the modern races of Europe had not only established themselves, but had begun to separate into those larger and smaller colonies which now mark out the great anthropological divisions of western Europe. It is therefore interesting to glance at the cranial distinctions of the men who successively entered western Europe in Upper Palæolithic and Neolithic times. The upper part of the table corresponds with that of Ripley.(25)

MODERN, NEOLITHIC, AND UPPER PALÆOLITHIC EUROPEAN RACES OF THE EXISTING SPECIES OF MAN (_HOMO SAPIENS_)

+--------------------------------------------------------------
| | | | | | | |
| | Type | Head | Face | Hair | Eyes |Stature |
| | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | |
|----|-------------|-------|-------|---------|-------|--------|
| VI.|TEUTONIC |Long, |High, |Very |Blue. |Tall. |
| |(? Baltic). |narrow.|narrow.|light. | | |
|----|-------------|-------|-------|---------|-------|--------|
| V.|MEDITERRANEAN|Long, |High, |Dark |Dark. |Medium, |
| |(? Ofnet). |narrow.|narrow.|brown or | |slender.|
| | | | |black. | | |
|----|-------------|-------|-------|---------|-------|--------|
| IV.|ALPINE, |Round. |Broad. |Light |Hazel- |Medium, |
| |CELTIC | | |chestnut.|gray. |stocky. |
| |(? Ofnet). | | | | | |
| | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | |
|----|-------------|-------|-------|---------|-------|--------|
|III.|FURFOOZ- |Broad. |Medium.| | | |
| |GRENELLE | | | ? | ? | ? |
| |(? Ofnet) | | | | | |
|----|-------------|-------|-------|---------|-------|--------|
| II.|BRÜNN- |Long. |Low, | | | |
| |PŘEDMOST | |medium.| ? | ? | ? |
| |(Moravia). | | | | | |
|----|-------------|-------|-------|---------|-------|--------|
| I.|CRÔ-MAGNON. |Long. |Low and| ? | ? |Tall to |
| | | |broad. | | |medium. |
+--------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------+
| |Cephalic|
| Nose | Index |
| |Average |
| |per cent|
|---------|--------|
|Narrow, | 75 |
|aquiline.| |
|---------|--------|
|Rather | |
|broad. | 75 |
| | |
|---------|--------|
|Variable;| 87 |
|rather | |
|broad; | |
|heavy | |
| | |
|---------|--------|
| | |
| ? | 79-85 |
| | |
|---------|--------|
| | 68.2 or|
| ? | 65.7 |
| | |
|---------|--------|
|Narrow, | ? 63- |
|aquiline.| ? 76.27|
-------------------+

It would appear that five out of these six great racial types had entered Europe before the close of Upper Palæolithic times, namely, I to V in the above table.

How about the sixth type; the narrow-headed, light-haired people of the north, the modern Teutonic type? This question cannot be answered at present. We have, however, high authority for the invasion of a new northern race, which may have been of the Teutonic type, as occurring before the close of Palæolithic times. These were the people described above, migrating along the shores of the Baltic with a new northern Maglemose culture and crude naturalistic art.

CONCLUSIONS AS TO THE OLD STONE AGE

The above outline of the beginnings of the Neolithic Age shows that the Palæolithic represents a complete cycle of human development; we have traced its rise, its perfection, its decline. During this dawning period of the long prehistory of Europe the dominant features are the very great antiquity of the spirit of man and the fundamental similarity between the great steps of prehistory and of history.

The rise of the spirit of man through the Old Stone Age cannot be traced continuously in a single race because the races were changing; as at the present time, one race replaced another, or two races dwelt side by side. The sudden appearance in Europe at least 25,000 years ago of a human race with a high order of brain power and ability was not a leap forward but the effect of a long process of evolution elsewhere. When the prehistoric archæology of eastern Europe and of Asia has been investigated we may obtain some light on this antecedent development.

During this age the rudiments of all the modern economic powers of man were developed: the guidance of the hand by the mind, manifested in his creative industry; his inventive faculty; the currency or spread of his inventions; the adaptation of means to ends in utensils, in weapons, and in clothing. The same is true of the æsthetic powers, of close observation, of the sense of form, of proportion, of symmetry, the appreciation of beauty of animal form and the beauty of line, color, and form in modelling and sculpture. Finally, the schematic representation and notation of ideas so far as we can perceive was alphabetic rather than pictographic. Of the musical sense we have at present no evidence. The religious sense, the appreciation of some power or powers behind the great phenomena of nature, is evidenced in the reverence for the dead, in burials apparently related to notions of a future existence of the dead, and especially in the mysteries of the art of the caverns.

All these steps indicate the possession of certain _generic_ faculties of mind similar to our own. That this mind of the Upper Palæolithic races was of a kind capable of a high degree of education we entertain no doubt whatever because of the very advanced order of brain which is developed in the higher members of these ancient races; in fact, it may be fairly assumed from experiences in the education of existing races of much lower brain capacity, such as the Eskimo or Fuegian. The emergence of such a mind from the mode of life of the Old Stone Age is one of the greatest mysteries of psychology and of history.

The rise and fall of cultures and of industries, which is at this very day the outstanding feature of the history of western Europe, was fully typified in the very ancient contests with stone weapons which were waged along the borders of the Somme, the Marne, the Seine, and the Danube. No doubt, each invasion, each conquest, each substitution of an industry or a culture had within it the impelling contest of the spirit and will of man, the intelligence directing various industrial and warlike implements, the superiority either of force or of mind.

(=1=) Cartailhac, 1903.1, pp. 330, 331.

(=2=) Déchelette, 1908.1, vol. I, pp. 314-320.

(=3=) _Op. cit._, p. 320.

(=4=) _Op. cit._, pp. 505-510.

(=5=) Breuil, 1912.6, pp. 2-6.

(=6=) _Ibid._, 1912.7, pp. 232, 233.

(=7=) _Ibid._, 1912.6, p. 20.

(=8=) Koken, 1912.1, pp. 172, 173, 176-178, 180, 181, 201.

(=9=) Schmidt, 1912.1, p. 40.

(=10=) Breuil, 1912.7, p. 225.

(=11=) _Op. cit._, p. 233.

(=12=) Schmidt, 1912.1, p. 41.

(=13=) Schliz, 1912.1, pp. 242-244.

(=14=) _Op. cit._, p. 252.

(=15=) Boule, 1913.1, p. 210.

(=16=) Dupont, 1871.1.

(=17=) Fischer, 1913.1, p. 356.

(=18=) Breuil, 1912.5.

(=19=) _Ibid._, 1912.7, pp. 235, 236.

(=20=) Obermaier, 1912.1, pp. 467-469.

(=21=) Salmon, 1898.1.

(=22=) Munro, 1912.1, pp. 275-277.

(=23=) Déchelette, 1908.1, vol. I, p. 326.

(=24=) Breuil, 1912.5, p. 560.

(=25=) Ripley, 1899.1, p. 121.