Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric PeoplesNadaillac, Jean-François-Albert du Pouget, marquis de
History
Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples
Nadaillac, Jean-François-Albert du Pouget, marquis de
Archaeology; Prehistoric peoples
It is generally admitted that we can tell whether the fracture of long
bones was intentional by the way in which they were broken. This fact,
which is true alike with the bones of men and of animals, is the most
important proof we have of the cannibalism of the men of the Stone age.
To the examples already given, we can easily add others culled from
France. In the Pyrenees and in the caves of Lourdes and Gourdan, for
instance, human bones have been found mixed with the cinders and ashes
of the hearth, and still bearing the marks of the implements with which
they were broken.
At Bruniquel a human skull was found which had been opened in the same
way as the heads of ruminants amongst which it was picked up, and on
its external surface were deep notches, which appear to have been made
with a flint hatchet. Similar traces of revolting feasts on human flesh
are not at all rare; near Paris, at Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, and at
Varenne-Saint-Maur, for instance.8
The excavations in the Montesquieu-Avantès Cave, about six miles from
Saint-Girons, have brought to light a hearth covered over with a layer
of stalagmite; numerous fragments of human bones, crania, femora,
tibiæ, humeri, and radii were found in this layer, and in that of the
subjacent clay. In many cases the medullary orifice had been enlarged
to make it easier to get out the marrow. It is impossible to attribute
this to a rodent, for the bones gnawed by animals of that kind present
a regular series of marks. The conclusion is inevitable: these bones,
alike of men and of animals, were the remains of a meal.9
In Kent’s Hole, the celebrated cave in Devonshire, amongst many objects
dating from the Stone age, were found some human bones bearing traces
of having been gnawed by man. The eminent anthropologist, Owen, came to
a similar conclusion—that cannibalism had been practised—after
examining the jaw-bone of a child found in Scotland; and so did the
Rev. F. Porter, after the excavations near Scarborough, where several
skeletons were found under a tumulus, which had apparently been thrown
where they were discovered by accident.
The Cesareda caves in Portugal have yielded some bones split
lengthwise; and beneath the dolmen near the village of Hammer, in
Denmark, human bones and those of stags have been found half gnawed,
and showing only too clearly the origin of the marks upon them. Worsaae
quotes similar facts at Borreby, Chantres refers to the same thing in
the caves of the Caucasus, Captain Burton at Beitsahur, near Jerusalem,
Wiener in the _sambaquis_ of Brazil, even in deposits which he
considers of recent origin.10
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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