Evolution (Biology); Glacial epoch; Human beings -- Origin; Human evolution
Mixed with the human bones inside the grotto first removed by
Bonnemaison, were eighteen small, round, and flat plates of a white
shelly substance, made of some species of cockle (Cardium), pierced
through the middle as if for being strung into a bracelet. In the
substratum also in the interior examined by M. Lartet was found the tusk
of a young Ursus spelaeus, the crown of which had been stripped of its
enamel, and which had been carved perhaps in imitation of the head of a
bird. It was perforated lengthwise as if for suspension as an ornament
or amulet. A flint knife also was found in the interior which had
evidently never been used; in this respect, unlike the numerous worn
specimens found outside, so that it is conjectured that it may, like
other associated works of art, have been placed there as part of the
funeral ceremonies.
A few teeth of the cave-lion, Felis spelaea, and two tusks of the wild
boar, also found in the interior, were memorials perhaps of the chase.
No remains of the same animals were met with among the external relics.
On the whole, the bones of animals inside the vault offer a remarkable
contrast to those of the exterior, being all entire and uninjured, none
of them broken, gnawed, half-eaten, scraped, or burnt like those lying
among the ashes on the other side of the great slab which formed the
portal. The bones of the interior seem to have been clothed with their
flesh when buried in the layer of loose soil strewed over the floor.
In confirmation of this idea, many bones of the skeleton were often
observed to be in juxtaposition, and in one spot all the bones of the
leg of an Ursus spelaeus were lying together uninjured. Add to this,
the entire absence in the interior of cinders and charcoal, and we
can scarcely doubt that we have here an example of an ancient place of
sepulture, closed at the opening so effectually against the hyaenas or
other carnivora that no marks of their teeth appear on any of the bones,
whether human or brute.
John Carver, in his travels in the interior of North America in a
1766-68 (chapter 15.), gave a minute account of the funeral rites of
an Indian tribe which inhabited the country now called Iowa, at the
junction of the St. Peter's River with the Mississippi; and Schiller,
in his famous "Nadowessische Todtenklage," has faithfully embodied in
a poetic dirge all the characteristic features of the ceremonies so
graphically described by the English traveller, not omitting the many
funeral gifts which, we are told, were placed "in a cave" with the
bodies of the dead. The lines beginning, "Bringet her die letzten
Gaben," have been thus translated, truthfully, and with all the spirit
of the original, by Sir E. L. Bulwer*:--
"Here bring the last gifts!--and with these
The last lament be said;
Let all that pleased, and yet may please,
Be buried with the dead.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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