After this dissertation, which was necessary to confute the theory which gives such a degrading explanation of our origin, we must contemplate man at the period when he was first placed upon the earth, weak and helpless, in the midst of the inclement and wild nature which surrounded him.

However much our pride may suffer by the idea, we must confess that, at the earliest period of his existence, man could have been but little distinguished from the brute. Care for his natural wants must have absorbed his whole being; all his efforts must have tended to one sole aim—that of insuring his daily subsistence.

At first, his only food must have been fruits and roots; for he had not as yet invented any weapon wherewith to destroy wild animals. If he succeeded in killing any creatures of small size he devoured them in a raw state, and made a covering of their skins to shelter himself against the inclemency of the weather. His pillow was a stone, his roof was the shadow of a wide-spreading tree, or some dark cavern which also served as a refuge against wild beasts.

For how many ages did this miserable state last? No one can tell. Man is an improvable being, and indefinite progress is the law of his existence. Improvement is his supreme attribute; and this it is which gives him the pre-eminence over all the creatures which surround him. But how wavering must have been his first steps in advance, and how many efforts must have been given to the earliest creation of his mind and to the first work of his hands—doubtless some shapeless attempt in which we nowadays, perhaps, should have some difficulty in recognising the work of any intelligent being!

Towards the commencement of the quaternary epoch, a great natural phenomenon took place in Europe. Under the influence of numerous and varied causes, which up to the present time have not been fully recognised, a great portion of Europe became covered with ice, on the one hand, making its way from the poles down to the most southern latitudes, and, on the other, descending into the plains from the summits of the highest mountain chains. Ice and ice-fields assumed a most considerable extension. As all the lower parts of the continent were covered by the sea, there were only a few plateaux which could afford a refuge to man and animals flying from this deadly cold. Such was the Glacial Period, which produced the annihilation of so many generations of animals, and must have equally affected man himself, so ill-defended against this universal and sudden winter.

Man, however, was enabled to resist the attacks of revolted nature. Without doubt, in this unhappy period, he must have made but little progress, even if his intellectual development were not completely stopped. At all events, the human species did not perish. The glacial period came to an end, the ice-fields shrank back to their original limits, and Nature reassumed its primitive aspect.

When the ice had gradually retired into the more northern latitudes, and had become confined to the higher summits, a new generation of animals—another fauna, as naturalists call it—made its appearance on the globe. This group of animals, which had newly come into being, differed much from those that had disappeared in the glacial cataclysm. Let us cast an inquiring glance on these strange and now extinct creatures.

First we have the mammoth (Elephas primigenius), or the woolly-haired and maned elephant, carcases of which were found, entire and in good preservation, in the ice on the coasts of Siberia. Next comes the rhinoceros with a complete nasal septum (Rhinoceros tichorhinus), likewise clad in a warm and soft fur, the nose of which is surmounted with a remarkable pair of horns. Then follow several species of the hippopotamus, which come as far north as the rivers of England and Russia; a bear of great size inhabiting caverns (Ursus spelÆus), and presenting a projecting forehead and a large-sized skull; the cave lion or tiger (Felis spelÆa), which much surpassed in strength the same animals of the existing species; various kinds of hyÆnas (HyÆna spelÆa), much stronger than those of our epoch; the bison or aurochs (Biso europÆus), which still exists in Poland; the great ox, the Urus of the ancients (Bos primigenius); the gigantic Irish elk (Megaceros hibernicus), the horns of which attained to surprising dimensions. Other animals made their appearance at the same epoch, but they are too numerous to mention; among them were some of the Rodent family. Almost all these species are now extinct, but man certainly existed in the midst of them.

The mammoth, elephant, rhinoceros, stag, and hippopotamus were then in the habit of roaming over Europe in immense herds, just as some of these animals still do in the interior of Africa. These animals must have had their favourite haunts—spots where they assembled together in thousands; or else it would be difficult to account for the countless numbers of bones which are found accumulated at the same spot.

Before these formidable bands, man could dream of nothing but flight. It was only with some isolated animal that he could dare to engage in a more or less unequal conflict. Farther on in our work, we shall see how he began to fabricate some rough weapons, with a view of attacking his mighty enemies.

The first important step which man made in the path of progress was the acquisition of fire. In all probability, man came to the knowledge of it by accident, either by meeting with some substance which had been set on fire by lightning or volcanic heat, or by the friction of pieces of wood setting a light to some very inflammable matter.

In order to obtain fire, man of the quaternary epoch may have employed the same means as those made use of by the American aborigines, at the time when Christopher Columbus first fell in with them on the shores of the New World—means which savage nations existing at the present day still put in practice. He rubbed two pieces of dry wood one against the other, or turned round and round with great rapidity a stick sharpened to a point, having placed the end of it in a hole made in the trunk of a very dry tree (fig. 7).

As among the savages of the present day we find certain elementary mechanisms adapted to facilitate the production of fire, it is not impossible that these same means were practised at an early period of the human race. It would take a considerable time to set light to two pieces of dry wood by merely rubbing them against one another; but if a bow be made use of, that is, the chord of an arc fixed firmly on a handle, so as to give a rapid revolution to a cylindrical rod of wood ending in a point which entered into a small hole made in a board, the board may be set on fire in a few minutes. Such a mode of obtaining fire may have been made use of by the men who lived in the same epoch with the mammoth and other animals, the species of which are now extinct.

The first rudiments of combustion having been obtained, so as to serve, during the daytime, for the purposes of warmth and cooking food, and during the night, for giving light, how was the fire to be kept up? Wood from the trees that grew in the district, or from those which were cast up by the currents of the rivers or sea; inflammable mineral oils; resin obtained from coniferous trees; the fat and grease of wild animals; oil extracted from the great cetaceans;—all these substances must have assisted in maintaining combustion, for the purposes both of warmth and light. The only fuel which the Esquimaux of the present day have either to warm their huts or light them during the long nights of their gloomy climate, is the oil of the whale and seal, which, burnt in a lamp with a short wick, serves both to cook their food and also to warm and illumine their huts.

Even, nowadays, in the Black Forest (Duchy of Baden), instead of candles, long splinters of very dry beech are sometimes made use of, which are fixed in a horizontal position at one end and lighted at the other. This forms an economical lamp, which is really not to be despised.

We have also heard of the very original method which is resorted to by the inhabitants of the Faroe Isles in the northern seas of Europe, in order to warm and light up their huts. This method consists in taking advantage of the fat and greasy condition of the young Stormy Petrel (Mother Carey's Chicken), so as to convert its body into a regular lamp. All that is necessary is to draw a wick through its body, projecting at the beak, which when lighted causes this really animal candle to throw out an excellent light until the last greasy morsel of the bird is consumed.

This bird is also used by the natives of the Isles as a natural fuel to keep up their fires and cook other birds.

Whatever may have been the means which were made use of by primitive man in order to procure fire, either the simple friction of two pieces of wood one against the other, continued for a long time, the bow, or merely a stick turning round rapidly by the action of the hand, without any kind of mechanism—it is certain that the acquisition of fire must be classed amongst the most beautiful and valuable discoveries which mankind has made. Fire must have put an end to the weariness of the long nights. In the presence of fire, the darkness of the holes and caverns in which man made his first retreat, must have vanished away. With the aid of fire, the most rigorous climates became habitable, and the damp which impregnated the body of man or his rough garments, made of the skin of the bear or some long-haired ruminant, could be evaporated. With fire near them, the danger arising from ferocious beasts must have much diminished; for a general instinct leads wild animals to dread the light and the heat of a fire. Buried, as they were, in the midst of forests infested with wild beasts, primitive men might, by means of a fire kept alight during the night, sleep in peace without being disturbed by the attacks of the huge wild beasts which prowled about all round them.

Fire, too, gave the first starting-point to man's industry. It afforded means to the earliest inhabitants of the earth for felling trees, for procuring charcoal, for hardening wood for the manufacture of their rudimentary implements, and for baking their primitive pottery.

Thus, as soon as man had at his disposal the means for producing artificial heat, his position began to improve, and the kindly flame of the hearth became the first centre round which the family circle was constituted.

Ere long man felt the need of strengthening his natural powers against the attacks of wild beasts. At the same time he desired to be able to make his prey some of the more peaceable animals, such as the stag, the smaller kinds of ruminants, and the horse. Then it was that he began to manufacture weapons.

He had remarked, spread about the surface of the ground, certain flints, with sharp corners and cutting edges. These he gathered up, and by the means of other stones of a rather tougher nature, he broke off from them pieces, which he fashioned roughly in the shape of a hatchet or hammer. He fixed these splinters into split sticks, by way of a handle, and firmly bound them in their places with the tendons of an animal or the strong stalks of some dried plant. With this weapon, he could, if he pleased, strike his prey at a distance.

When man had invented the bow and chipped out flint arrow-heads, he was enabled to arrest the progress of the swiftest animal in the midst of his flight.

Since the time when the investigations with regard to primitive man have been set on foot in all countries, and have been energetically prosecuted, enormous quantities have been found of these chipped flints, arrow-heads, and various stone implements, which archÆologists designate by the common denomination of hatchets, in default of being able, in some cases, to distinguish the special use for which they had been employed. Before going any further, it will be necessary to enter into some details with regard to these flint implements—objects which are altogether characteristic of the earliest ages of civilisation.

For a long time past chipped stones of a somewhat similar character have been met with here and there in several countries, sometimes on the surface of, and sometimes buried deeply in, the ground; but no one understood what their significance was. If the common people ever distinguished them from ordinary stones, they attached to them some superstitious belief. Sometimes they called them "thunder-stones," because they attributed to them the power of preserving from lightning those who were in possession of them. It was not until the middle of the present century that naturalists and archÆologists began to comprehend the full advantage which might be derived from the examination of these chipped stones, in reconstructing the lineaments of the earliest of the human race and in penetrating, up to a certain point, into their manners, customs, and industry. These stone-hatchets and arrow-heads are, therefore, very plentiful in the present day in collections of antiquities and cabinets of natural history.

Most of these objects which are found in Europe are made of flint, and this circumstance may be easily explained. Flint must have been preferred as a material, on account both of its hardness and its mode of cleavage, which may be so readily adapted to the will of the workman. One hard blow, skilfully applied, is sufficient to break off, by the mere shock, a sharp-edged flake of a blade-like shape. These sharp-edged blades of silex might serve as knives. Certainly they would not last long in use, for they are very easily notched; but primitive men must have been singularly skilful in making them.

Although the shapes of these stone implements are very varied, they may all be classed under a certain number of prevailing types; and these types are to be found in very different countries. The flint hatchets are at first very simple although irregular in their shape; but they gradually manifest a much larger amount of talent exhibited in their manufacture, and a better judgment is shown in adapting them to the special uses for which they were intended. The progress of the human intellect is written in ineffaceable characters on these tablets of stone, which, defended as they were, by a thick layer of earth, bid defiance to the injuries of time.

Let us not despise these first and feeble efforts of our primitive forefathers, for they mark the date of the starting-point of manufactures and the arts. If the men of the stone age had not persevered in their efforts, we, their descendants, should never have possessed either our palaces or our masterpieces of painting and sculpture. As Boucher de Perthes says, "The first man who struck one pebble against another to make some requisite alteration in its form, gave the first blow of the chisel which has resulted in producing the Minerva and all the sculpture of the Parthenon."

ArchÆologists who have devoted their energies to investigating the earliest monuments of human industry, have found it necessary to be on their guard against certain errors, or rather wilful deceptions, which might readily pervert their judgment and deprive their discoveries of all character of authenticity. There is, in fact, a certain class of persons engaged in a deceptive manufacture who have taken a delight in misleading archÆologists by fabricating apocryphal flint and stone implements, in which they drive a rather lucrative trade. They assert, without the least scruple, the high antiquity of their productions, which they sell either to inexperienced amateurs, who are pleased to put them in their collections duly labelled and ticketed, or—which is a more serious matter—to workmen who are engaged in making excavations in fossiliferous beds. These workmen hide the fictitious specimens in the soil they are digging, using every requisite precaution so as to have the opportunity of subsequently extracting them and fingering a reward for them from some too trusting naturalist. These imitations are, moreover, so cleverly made, that it sometimes requires well-practised eyes to recognise them; but they may be recognised with some degree of facility by the following characteristics:—

The ancient flints present a glassy surface which singularly contrasts with the dull appearance of the fresh cleavages. They are also for the most part covered with a whitish coating or patina, which is nothing but a thin layer of carbonate of lime darkened in colour by the action of time. Lastly, many of these flints are ornamented with branching crystallisations, called dendrites, which form on their surface very delicate designs of a dark brown; these are owing to the combined action of the oxides of iron and manganese (fig. 8).

We must add that these flint implements often assume the colour of the soil in which they have been buried for so many centuries; and as Mr. Prestwich, a learned English geologist, well remarks, this agreement in colour indicates that they have remained a very considerable time in the stratum which contains them.

Among the stone implements of primitive ages, some are found in a state of perfect preservation, which clearly bears witness to their almost unused state; others, on the contrary, are worn, rounded, and blunted, sometimes because they have done good service in bygone days, and sometimes because they have been many times rolled over and rubbed by diluvial waters, the action of which has produced this result. Some, too, are met with which are broken, and nothing of them remains but mere vestiges. In a general way, they are completely covered with a very thick coating which it is necessary to break off before they can be laid open to view.

They are especially found under the soil in grottos and caves, on which we shall remark further in some detail, and they are almost always mixed up with the bones of extinct mammalian species.

Certain districts which are entirely devoid of caves contain, however, considerable deposits of these stone implements. We may mention in this category the alluvial quarternary beds of the valley of the Somme, known under the name of drift beds, which were worked by Boucher de Perthes with an equal amount of perseverance and success.

This alluvium was composed of a gravelly deposit, which geologists refer to the great inundations which, during the epoch of the great bear and the mammoth, gave to Europe, by hollowing out its valleys, its present vertical outline. The excavations in the sand and gravel near Amiens and Abbeville, which were directed with so much intelligence by Boucher de Perthes, have been the means of exhuming thousands of worked flints, affording unquestionable testimony of the existence of man during the quaternary epoch.

All these worked flints may be classed under some of the principal types, from which their intended use may be approximately conjectured.

One of the types which is most extensively distributed, especially in the drift beds of the valley of the Somme, where scarcely any other kind is found, is the almond-shaped type (fig. 10).

The instruments of this kind are hatchets of an oval shape, more or less elongated, generally flattened on both sides, but sometimes only on one, carefully chipped all over their surface so as to present a cutting edge. The workmen of the Somme give them the graphic name of cats' tongues.

They vary much in size, but are generally about six inches long by three wide, although some are met with which are much larger. The Pre-historic Gallery in the Universal Exposition of 1867, contained one found at Saint-Acheul, and exhibited by M. Robert, which measured eleven inches in length by five in width. This remarkable specimen is represented in fig. 11.

Another very characteristic form is that which is called the Moustier type (fig. 12), because they have been found in abundance in the beds in the locality of Moustier, which forms a portion of the department of Dordogne. This name is applied to the pointed flints which are only wrought on one side, the other face being completely plain.

To the same deposit also belongs the flint scraper, the sharp edge of which forms the arc of a circle, the opposite side being of some considerable thickness so as to afford a grasp to the hand of the operator.

Some of these instruments (fig. 13) are finely toothed all along their sharp edge; they were evidently used for the same purposes as our saws.

The third type (fig. 14) is that of knives. They are thin and narrow tongue-shaped flakes, cleft off from the lump of flint at one blow. When one of the ends is chipped to a point, these knives become scratchers. Sometimes these flints are found to be wrought so as to do service as augers.

The question is often asked, how these primitive men were able to manufacture their weapons, implements, and utensils, on uniform models, without the help of metallic hammers. This idea has, indeed, been brought forward as an argument against those who contend for the existence of quaternary man. Mr. Evans, an English geologist, replied most successfully to this objection by a very simple experiment. He took a pebble and fixed it in a wooden handle; having thus manufactured a stone hammer, he made use of it to chip a flint little by little, until he had succeeded in producing an oval hatchet similar to the ancient one which he had before him.

The flint-workers who, up to the middle of the present century, prepared gun-flints for the army, were in the habit of splitting the stone into splinters. But they made use of steel hammers to cleave the flint, whilst primitive man had nothing better at his disposal than another and rather harder stone.

Primitive man must have gone to work in somewhat the following way: They first selected flints, which they brought to the shape of those cores or nuclei which are found in many places in company with finished implements; then, by means of another and harder stone of elongated shape, they cleft flakes off the flint. These flakes were used for making knives, scratchers, spear or arrow-heads, hatchets, tomahawks, scrapers, &c. Some amount of skill must have been required to obtain the particular shape that was required; but constant practice in this work exclusively must have rendered this task comparatively easy.

How, in the next place, were these clipped flints fitted with handles, so as to make hatchets, poniards and knives?

Some of them were fixed at right angles between the two split ends of a stick: this kind of weapon must have somewhat resembled our present hatchets. Others, of an oval shape and circular edge, might have been fastened transversely into a handle, so as to imitate a carpenter's adze. In case of need, merely a forked branch or a piece of split wood might serve as sheath or handle to the flint blade. Flints might also have been fixed as double-edged blades by means of holes cut in pieces of wood, to which a handle was afterwards added.

These flint flakes might, lastly, be fitted into a handle at one end. The wide-backed knives, which were only sharp on one side, afforded a grasp for the hand without further trouble, and might dispense with a handle. The small flints might also be darted as projectiles by the help of a branch of a tree forming a kind of spring, such as we may see used as a toy by children.

The mere description of these stone hatchets, fitted on to pieces of wood, recall to our mind the natural weapons used by some of the American savages, and the tribes which still exist in a state of freedom in the Isles of Oceania. We allude to the tomahawk, a name which we so often meet with in the accounts of voyages round the world. Among those savage nations who have not as yet bent their necks beneath the yoke of civilisation, we might expect to find—and, in fact, we do find—the weapons and utensils which were peculiar to man in primitive ages. A knowledge of the manners and customs of the present Australian aborigines has much conduced to the success of the endeavours to reconstruct a similar system of manners and customs in respect to man of the quaternary age.

It was with the weapons and implements that we have just described that man, at the epoch of the great bear and mammoth, was able to repulse the attacks of the ferocious animals which prowled round his retreat and often assailed him (fig. 16).

But the whole life of primitive man was not summed up in defending himself against ferocious beasts, and in attacking them in the chase. Beyond the needs which were imposed upon him by conflict and hunting, he felt, besides, the constant necessity of quenching his thirst. Water is a thing in constant use by man, whether he be civilised or savage. The fluid nature of water renders it difficult to convey it except by enclosing it in bladders, leathern bottles, hollowed-out stumps of trees, plaited bowls, &c. Receptacles of this kind were certain ultimately to become dirty and unfit for the preservation of water; added to this they could not endure the action of fire. It was certainly possible to hollow out stone, so as to serve as a receptacle for water; but any kind of stone which was soft enough to be scooped out, and would retain its tenacity after this operation, is very rarely met with. Shells, too, might be used to hold a liquid; but then shells are not to be found in every place. It was, therefore, necessary to resolve the problem—how far it might be possible to make vessels which would be strong, capable of holding water, and able to stand the heat of the fire without breaking or warping. What was required was, in fact, the manufacture of pottery.

The potter's art may, perhaps, be traced back to the most remote epochs of man. We have already seen, in the introduction to this work, that, in 1835, M. Joly found in the cave of Nabrigas (LozÈre), a skull of the great bear pierced with a stone arrow-head, and that by the side of this skull were also discovered fragments of pottery, on which might still be seen the imprint of the fingers which moulded it. Thus, the potter's art may have already been exercised in the earliest period which we can assign to the development of mankind.

Other causes also might lead us to believe that man, at a very early period of his existence, succeeded in the manufacture of rough pottery.

The clay which is used in making all kinds of pottery, from the very lowest kitchen utensil up to the most precious specimens of porcelain, may be said to exist almost everywhere. By softening it and kneading it with water, it may be moulded into vessels of all shapes. By mere exposure to the heat of the sun, these vessels will assume a certain amount of cohesion; for, as tradition tells us, the towers and palaces of ancient Nineveh were built entirely with bricks which had been baked in the sun.

Yet the idea of hardening any clayey paste by means of the action of fire is so very simple, that we are not of opinion that pottery which had merely been baked in the sun was ever made use of to any great extent, even among primitive man. Mere chance, or the most casual observation, might have taught our earliest forefathers that a morsel of clay placed near a fire-hearth became hardened and altogether impenetrable to water, that is, that it formed a perfect specimen of pottery. Yet the art, though ancient, has not been universally found among mankind.

Ere long, experience must have taught men certain improvements in the manufacture of pottery. Sand was added to the clay, so as to render it less subject to "flying" on its first meeting the heat of the fire; next, dried straw was mixed with the clay in order to give it more coherence.

In this way those rough vessels were produced, which were, of course, moulded with the hand, and still bear the imprints of the workman's fingers. They were only half-baked, on account of the slight intensity of heat in the furnace which they were then obliged to make use of, which was nothing more than a wood fire, burning in the open air, on a stone hearth.

From these data we give a representation (fig. 17) of the workshop of the earliest potter.