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
The remains of the stag and of the ox are more numerous than those of
any other animal, and it is easy to see that every clay the importance
of a pastoral life became more clearly recognized. In the most ancient
Lake Stations, those of Mooseedorf, Wangen, and Meilen, for instance,
the stag predominates; in those of the western lakes, which are
comparatively more recent, relics of the ox are more numerous. In the
Lake village of Nidau, which dates from the Bronze age, a greatly
increased number of bones of domestic animals have been found, whilst
those of wild creatures become rarer and rarer. The progress of
domestication is evident, and it is no less certain that the lapse of
centuries must have been required for the formation of the herds which
evidently existed in certain localities. It is possible that these
animals may have first entered Europe in the wake of foreign invaders,
and before being reduced to servitude, they may have roamed about in a
wild state, and even have been contemporaries with species now extinct.
However that may be, there can be no doubt on one point, they could not
domesticate themselves; one race of creatures after another must have
fallen under the subjection of man, who gradually became the master of
all the animals that are still about us.
We do not meet in the pile dwellings with the common mouse, the rat, or
the cat, and the horse is very rare. It is the same with the
kitchen-middings and the caves occupied in Neolithic times. The
disappearance of the horse, so numerous in earlier epochs, is general,
and this would be inexplicable if history did not solve the mystery.
The Bible, which gives us such complete details of the pastoral life of
the Hebrews, speaks for the first time of the horse after the exodus
from Egypt of the children of Israel, and in Egypt itself the horse is
not represented in any monument of earlier date than the Seventeenth
Dynasty. It is the same in America, animals of the equine race, that
were so numerous in early geological times, had long since disappeared
on the arrival of the Spaniards, and the horses they brought with them
inspired the Mexicans and Peruvians with unutterable terror.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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