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
19 “De Architectura,” book ii., c. i.
20 On the subject of tatooing an excellent work may be consulted by Dr
Magitot (“Ass. Franç. pour l’Avancement des Sciences,” Alger, 1881).
21 _Cypræa rufa, Cypræa lurida (Comptes rendus Acad. des Sciences_,
vol. lxxxiv., p. 1060).
22 On this point an excellent work may be consulted by S. Reinach: “Le
Musée de Saint Germain,” p. 232.
23 Vaudry: _Acad. des Sciences_, August 25, 1890.
24 A. Bertrand: _Acad. des Inscriptions_, April 29 and May 6, 1887.
25 Reinach in his “Catalogue of the Saint-Germain museum” gives the
best description I know of this now celebrated reindeer.
26 A. Milne Edwards: _Acad. des Sciences_, May 8, 1888.
27 “De Natura Rerum,” book v., v. 951, etc.
CHAPTER IV.
Caves, Kitchen-Middings, Lake Stations, “Terremares,” Crannoges,
Burghs, “Nurhags,” “Talayoti,” and “Truddhi.”
The earliest races of men lived in a climate less rigorous than ours,
on the shores of wide rivers, in the midst of fertile districts, where
fishing and the chase easily supplied all their needs. These races were
numerous and prolific, and we find traces of them all over Western
Europe, from Norfolk to the middle of Spain. What were the homes of
these men and their families? Did they crouch in dens, as Tacitus says
the German tribes did in his day? In his “Ancient Wiltshire,” Sir R.
Coalt Hoare says that the earliest human habitations were holes dug in
the earth and covered over with the branches of trees. Near Joigny
there still remain some circular holes in the ground, about fifty feet
in diameter by sixteen to twenty deep, known in the country under the
name of _buvards_. The trunk of a tree was fixed at the bottom and rose
above the ground, and the branches plastered with clay formed the roof.
The floor of these _buvards_ consists of a greasy black earth mixed
with bones, cinders, charcoal, and worked flints. Amongst the last
named, polished hatchets predominate, which proves that these refuges
were inhabited in Neolithic times, but there is nothing to prevent our
supposing that they were also occupied in the Palæolithic period.
Ameghino gives a still more striking example of an earth-dwelling. Near
Mercedes, about twenty leagues from Buenos Ayres, he picked up numerous
human bones, together with arrow-heads, chisels, flint knives, bone
stilettos and polishers, and bones of animals scratched and cut by man.
Later, Ameghino discovered the actual dwelling of this primeval man,
and his strange home was beneath the carapace of a gigantic armadillo,
the now extinct glyptodon seen in Fig. 48.
[Illustration: 48.]
The glyptodon.
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