The puzzle of life and how it has been put together : $b A short history of the formation of the earth, with its vegetable and animal life, from the earliest times, including an account of prehistoric man, his weapons, tools, and worksNicols, Arthur
Science
The puzzle of life and how it has been put together : $b A short history of the formation of the earth, with its vegetable and animal life, from the earliest times, including an account of prehistoric man, his weapons, tools, and works
Nicols, Arthur
Geology -- Juvenile literature; Prehistoric peoples -- Juvenile literature
In neither the first nor second stone period had men yet learned to
build any kind of habitations. They lived in caves simply, like wild
animals. On the banks of the river Vezère in France, which has cut
its way deeply through the rock, there are some celebrated caves once
inhabited by pre-historic men, and some of them are very large.
They were most likely hollowed out in the cliff by water, and many
generations of men lived here. In one of them four human skeletons were
found, with plenty of stone and flint tools, besides the bones of the
mammoth and lion, reindeer and other animals. The mammoth then as well
as the reindeer lived at that time in the valley of the Vezère. There
is no doubt that these caves were inhabited at separate times by people
who used only the roughest and simplest stone tools, and by others
who had made some progress and could polish their tools and make them
of bone and could scratch pictures of animals upon slips of bone and
slate. It is curious that all these drawings are side-view drawings,
and they are only outlines, just like the drawings of children now,
and the Esquimaux of the Arctic regions; because these people,
although they were grown up, had not discovered the art of drawing in
perspective and shading the figures. Still the pictures are wonderfully
true to nature, and must have been copied from living animals. There is
no earthenware in any of these caves, so that the useful art of making
pottery had not been discovered, neither is there any in the caves in
Switzerland, where the bones of the mammoth, lion, and rhinoceros are
also found, and the tools and weapons are much the same as those in the
French caverns. It is impossible to say whether the cave-dwellers of
France and Switzerland lived at the same time exactly, but they were in
about the same condition of civilization, and they must both have been
quite familiar with the appearance of the mammoth and lion, and other
animals, which are not mentioned in any history, however old it may be,
as inhabitants of these countries.
A discovery has lately been made in France of a large cavern near
Belfort, in the limestone rock, which has been covered up for ages. The
quarrymen while cutting out the stone came upon a small opening leading
into a very large cave, in which there was a great quantity of human
skeletons and bones and some beautifully ornamented vases, polished
stone bracelets, and a mat of plaited rushes. To these people, then,
the arts of pottery and weaving were known, and this was probably one
of their burying-places. They were evidently much more civilized than
the ancient people of the valley of the Vezère; but this cave must also
be of a great age, and its inhabitants have left no record of their
history in any kind of writing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account