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
Material proofs of the presence of animals are not wanting. The
accumulation of coprolites in the cave of Sentenheim (Alsace) bears
witness to the number of bears which once haunted it. Nordmann took
from a cave near Odessa 4,500 bones of ursidæ, associated with no less
numerous relics of the large cave-lion and cave-hyena.17 The Külock
Cave, now some six hundred and fifty feet above the river, contained
the remains of no less than 2,500 bears, and similar relics occur by
thousands in the osseous breccia of Santenay and in the cave of Lherm,
where they form a regular ossuary. It would be easy to quote similar
facts from Belgian, German, and Hungarian caves. In almost every case
the position of the skeletons seems to show that the bears sought a
last refuge in the caves, and that death had surprised them during
their winter sleep. Pachyderms were no less numerous than bears. The
remains of mammoths are found from the north of Europe to Greece and
Spain, and we meet with them in Algeria, in Asia from the Altai
Mountains to the Arctic Ocean, and in America in Mexico and Kentucky.
They seem to have entrenched themselves especially in Siberia, whence
tusks are still exported as an article of commerce. In the extreme
North, those parts of Wrangel’s Land which have been explored are
strewn with the bones of mastodons, and in some parts of Sonora and
Columbia these remains form almost inexhaustible deposits.
Animals of the cervine and equine groups were, if possible, yet more
numerous. M. Piette estimates the number of reindeer whose bones he has
picked up in the Gourdan Cave as over. 3,000, and the number of cervidæ
found at Hohlefels is positively incalculable.
In 1826, Marcel de Serres called attention to the great number of the
bones of animals of the equine family found in the neighborhood of
Lunel-Viel; at Solutré, the remains of horses cover a great portion of
the slope which stretches from the eastern side of the mountain to the
bottom of the valley. Here are found those vast accumulations to which
the inhabitants of the valley give the characteristic name of
_horse-walls_. The number of horses, the bones of which have gone to
form these walls, may be estimated without exaggeration at 40,000. The
bones are mixed together in the greatest confusion, many of them show
traces of having been burnt, and the flesh of the horse was evidently
the favorite diet of the people of Solutré.18
At first man obtained by force, often aided by strategy, the animals he
coveted. He bad not yet learnt to tame them and reduce them to
servitude. Neither the reindeer nor the horse was as yet domesticated,
and neither in the caves nor in the various deposits elsewhere has a
complete skeleton been found, but only—a very significant fact—the
bones on which had been the greater amount of flesh. The absence of any
remains of the dog, so indispensable an animal in the keeping of
flocks, is yet another proof that domestication was still unpractised.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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