The American Cyclopædia (1879)/Finds
FINDS, a term recently applied by English archæologists to deposits of objects connected with human life, and sometimes associated with human remains, but of prehistoric or unknown origin. The chief aim of scientific research in regard to them is to ascertain the historical relation and condition of the human beings which they represent. As the development of civilization is not a uniform process, the discovery of a few objects made and used by a prehistoric tribe is not a sufficient index to the exact place of that tribe in history. Within certain limits there is a real consistency in stages of civilization; but in the present state of prehistoric archæology it is hardly possible to make a classification which would correctly represent the sequence of forms and materials. The antiquaries of Denmark, a country especially rich in relics, classified their finds according to some leading features that seemed to indicate a regular sequence. They concluded that there had been an age when men used only implements of stone and bone, and were ignorant of the use of metals; that an age had succeeded when the use of bronze was known, and probably that of gold; and that there was a third age, when iron had superseded other metals for weapons and utensils. All the finds were consequently classified according to these three ages. It proved, however, that such exact lines could not be maintained. Men did not immediately cease to use stone implements when bronze was introduced; and bronze continued to be employed after the use of iron was well known. Another mode of classification is followed in France, where the finds are generally arranged in the museums after the following order:
| Stone Age. | 1. Epoch of extinct animals. | |
| 2. Epoch of migrated existing animals. | ||
| 3. Epoch of domesticated existing animals. | ||
| Metal Age. | 1. The bronze epoch. | |
| 2. The iron epoch. |
This classification, suggested by the archæologist Lartet, best serves our purpose of making a rapid survey and furnishing a short description of the objects found in ancient habitations of both hemispheres. For the various theories in relation to these finds, as well as for the nature of the places where they have been discovered, see American Antiquities, Archæology, Bone Caves, and Lake Dwellings.—Stone Age. Finds of objects classified as belonging to the first epoch of the stone age have been made principally in the caverns of Aurignac, in the hills of Fajoles, the Trou de la Fontaine, the cave of Sainte-Reine, the grotte des Fées at Arcy, the caves of Vergisson, Vallières, La Chaise, Gorge d'Enfer, Moustier, Pey de l'Azé, of Périgord, and of the department of Ariége, in France; in Kent's cave, Brixham, Gower, Kirkdale, and Wells, in England; in the caves of Chiampo and Laglio near Lake Como, of Palermo, San Ciro, and Macagnone, in Italy and Sicily; in a few caves in Spain, Algeria, Egypt, and Syria; in caves near the lake of Sumidouro in Brazil; and especially in Belgium, as near Liége, at Engis, Engihoul, and Naulette. In these caverns, and sometimes also on the surface of the ground or buried in it, have been found large quantities of chipped flints, arrowheads, and various stone implements, to all of which archæologists usually give the common name of hatchets. The commonest of the worked flints is the almond-shaped type. These instruments are oval hatchets carefully chipped all over the surface so as to form a cutting edge. The Moustier type is a pointed flint wrought on one side, the other being entirely plain. The third type is that of knives; they are thin and narrow tongue-shaped flakes, with one of the ends chipped to a point, and were used as scrapers. Others were wrought so as to do service as augers. Near Amiens were discovered small globular bodies with a hole through the middle, which are believed to be fossil shells used for adornment. There are many articles in the deposits of the quaternary epoch whose intention or significance is not known. Some are believed to have been religious symbols and emblems of authority. The natural color of all the wrought flints that belong to the earliest epoch of man's existence is gray, from the brightest to the darkest tint; but argillaceous soils color them white, and ochreous gravels yellowish brown. The proof of their age is the patina, which is the established term for those which are white on one side and brown on the other, probably from having lain between two different beds. To guard against fraud and to detect modern imitations of ancient stone implements, it is well to notice whether the flints are coated with branching crystallizations, called dendrites, of a dark brown, produced by the combined action of the oxides of iron and manganese generally contained in fossiliferous beds.—The finds which are assigned to the second division of the stone age, the epoch of the reindeer or of migrated existing animals, consist of flints which bear marks of more skilful workmanship, and implements in bone, ivory, and reindeer horn, not found in caves where human bones were mixed up with those of animals. Little splinters of bone, one or two inches long, straight, slender, and pointed at both ends, have been found among the deposits of Bruniquel and the Dordogne valley, and are believed to have served as fish hooks during this epoch. Numerous instruments have been found which must have been used as needles, as they are exactly like those now employed by the Lapps for the same purpose. Prof. Owen thinks the men of this period were anthropophagists, because human skulls have been found mixed up with sculptured flints, remains of pottery, and children's bones on which there seem to be traces of human teeth. To this period are also assigned the polishers, formed of sandstone or some other material with a rough surface; they were used for polishing bone and horn. Other objects classified as belonging to this age are barbed dartheads or harpoons; small flint saws, fine-toothed and double-edged; bone bodkins or stilettoes, either with or without a handle; smoothers, probably intended to flatten down the seams in the skins used for garments; flint points with a cutting edge, probably used as drills; whistles made from the first joint of the foot of a reindeer; staves of horn, which were perhaps symbols of authority; earthen vases and urns, which at the bottom bear traces of the action of fire; and first attempts at art, as sketches of mammoths graven on slabs of ivory, hilts of daggers carved in the shape of a reindeer, and representations of bisons, stags, and unknown herbivorous animals. The most important places where finds of such articles have been made are the grottoes and caves near Finale on the road from Genoa to Nice; a cave on a mountain near Geneva; the bottom of an ancient glacier moraine not far from the lake of Constance; the caverns at Solutré, Bourdeilles, Laugerie-Basse and Laugerie-Haute, Abbeville, Les Eyzies, Chaffant, La Madeleine, Lavache, and Bruniquel, in France; the cave of Chaleux, the settlements on the banks of the Lesse, the cave near Turfooz, in Belgium; and the gravel beds of Colorado and Wyoming, the loess of the lower Mississippi valley, and the Osage and Bourbeuse valleys, in North America.—The third epoch of the stone age, with domesticated animals of existing species, which is also designated as the polished stone epoch, is believed to embrace the finds made in the kjoekken-moeddings (Dan. kjoekken, kitchen; moedding, heap of refuse), or kitchen middens, principally in Scandinavia, but also discovered in Cornwall and Devonshire, England, in Scotland, and near Hyères, at St. Valery, department of Pas-de-Calais, at La Salle, and at Cronquelets, in France. Darwin met with them in Tierra del Fuego; Dampier in Australia; Pereira da Costa on the coast of Portugal; Lyell on the coasts of Massachusetts and Georgia; and Strobel on the coast of Brazil. Numerous finds assigned to this epoch have also been made in the caves of Old Castile and the provinces of Seville and Badajoz in Spain, in the neighborhood of Cività Nuova in S. Italy, and in the island of Elba. Polished stone implements have also been found in Würtemberg, Hungary, Poland, and Russia. Leguay found in 1860 near Varenne-Saint-Hilaire, at a spot called La Pierre au Prêtre, a complete polishing stone, having on its surface three depressions of different sizes, two well defined grooves, and one merely sketched out. The polishing of stone instruments was effected by rubbing the object in one of these cavities, in which probably a little water was poured, mixed with zircon or corundum powder, or perhaps merely with oxide of iron, which is still used by jewellers for the same purpose. Finds of numerous hatchets and other polished instruments, near the fragments of several polishing stones, have given rise to the supposition that at this epoch there were regular workshops in which weapons and implements were manufactured. In the kitchen middens were found flat hatchets, cut squarely at the edge; drilled hatchets variously combined with a hammer; double-edged axes and axe hammers, pierced with a round hole in which the handle was fixed; beautiful spear heads in the shape of a laurel leaf, flat, and chipped all over with great art, which were evidently fixed to staves; poniards with handles sometimes covered with delicate carving; arrowheads of various shapes; chisels somewhat in the form of a quadrangular prism; small stone saws, in the shape of a crescent of which the inner edge, which was either straight or concave, was skilfully serrated; and various ornaments, as necklaces made of small pieces of amber, perforated and strung. The instruments of stag's horn found in the valley of the Somme are also considered as belonging to this epoch. Particularly interesting relics are the pieces of polished flint half buried in a kind of sheath of stag's horn. The middle of the sheath is generally perforated with a round or oval hole, probably intended to receive a wooden handle. Sheaths have also been found which are not only provided with boars' tusks, but are hollowed out at each end so as to hold two flint hatchets at once. In the peat bogs of Abbeville have been discovered long bones belonging to mammals, as the tibia, femur, radius, and ulna, all cut in a uniform way either in the middle or at the ends, which were probably used as handles for flint implements. Near Pecquigny were found 19 boars' tusks split into halves, perfectly polished, and perforated at each end with a round hole. Through these holes was passed a string of some tendinous substance, the remains of which, it is said, were actually seen at the time of the discovery. In the caves of Ariége were found more than 20 stones which could only have been used for grinding corn. According to John Buchanan, quoted in Lyell's "Antiquity of Man," the canoes which were found in the low ground on the margin of the Clyde at Glasgow, as well as other boats found at the bottom of the Swiss lakes, and in Belgium and France, were formed of a single trunk of oak, hollowed out with some blunt instruments, probably stone hatchets, assisted by the action of fire; for which reasons it is believed that these finds must also be classified as belonging to this epoch of the stone age. Finds of stone implements similar to those described have been made in the vicinity of Alton, Illinois; Jackson, Laporte, Sullivan, and Crawford counties, Indiana; in a shell heap on the bank of the Grand lake, Louisiana; in Paris, Wisconsin; and a few in Kentucky.—Metallic Age. The principal places of deposit of articles assigned to the bronze epoch of the age of metals are the lacustrine habitations of Switzerland and other parts of Europe, and the palustrine villages of northern Italy. Numerous finds of articles belonging to this epoch have also been made in other prehistoric human habitations, and in tombs, in Scandinavia, the British isles, France, Switzerland, and Italy. The Danish bronze swords had hilts firmly fixed to the blade by means of two or more rivets, and some of them were splendidly ornamented. A bronze knife has been found with a handle in the form of a human figure executed with much fidelity. Several razors have been discovered, of which the blades were overloaded with ornaments. A very important find was made in 1861 in a tumulus in Jutland, of three wooden coffins, closed with movable lids, each of which contained a woollen cloak, a shawl, and a cap, and at the feet of the body two pieces of woollen material which seemed to be the remains of gaiters; each also held a sword, a knife, a bodkin, an awl, a pair of tweezers, a double button, a ball of amber, and a flint spear head. The shape of the sword and the knife indicates that the deposit belongs to the latter part of the bronze epoch. Various objects found in dwellings belonging to this epoch appear to have been religious symbols. Most of them have a shape bearing some relation to a circle, and many authors have attributed them to the worship of the sun. Crosses belonging to this and even to the stone age are also sometimes met with. The figure of a triangle found on various objects in bronze is also believed to bear some relation to certain religious ideas.—For the finds made in North America another epoch, of a special character, has to be presumed. In 1847 Mr. Knapp discovered in the Ontonagon region on Lake Michigan, under an accumulation of earth, a vein of native copper, containing a great number of stone hammers. One of the diggings brought to light some great diorite hatchets which were worked by the aid of a handle, and also large cylindrical masses of the same substance hollowed out to receive a handle. Copper wrought into various utensils is found in the mounds all the way from Wisconsin to the gulf coast. Squier and Davis discovered in a mound near Chillicothe several round shells of mica 10 or 12 in. in diameter, overlapping like the scales of a fish. A find of 250 mica plates was made in the Grave creek mound. Many of the implements of these mound builders of the age of copper seem to have been wrought also of a ribbon-marked silicious stone. Squier and Davis found a deposit of obsidian arrowheads in Ohio, and Mr. Perkins one in Wisconsin.—The Iron Epoch. The finds assigned to this epoch consist of instruments of iron or bronze, or of iron combined with bronze instead of stone, articles of silver and lead, specimens of improved pottery, and coins. The most valuable finds have been made in the vast burial ground recently discovered at Hallstadt, near Salzburg, in Austria. The swords found there have iron blades and bronze hilts. The warriors' sword belts are generally formed of plates of bronze, and embellished with a repoussé ornament executed with a hammer. Several necklaces with pendants, and hundreds of bracelets, hairpins, and bronze fibulæ, all wrought with taste, have also been found here. Nearly 200 bronze vessels have been discovered, some of which are 36 in. high. Some of these vessels were carefully riveted, but not soldered. A find of glass vessels was also made in the same place, and remains of pottery were abundant. The ivory objects found were heads of hair pins and pommels of swords. The helmets resemble those worn by Gallic soldiers. In the tombs on the plateau of La Somma, in Lombardy, were found vases of fine clay, evidently wrought on the potter's wheel, ornamented with various designs, and containing ashes. Near Bern, at a spot called "the battle field of Tiefenau," because it appears to have been the theatre of a great conflict between the Helvetians and the Gauls, a find was made of about 100 swords and spear heads, fragments of coats of mail, rings, fibulæ, tires of chariot wheels, horses' bits, and coins in gold, silver, and bronze. The only agricultural implements found in places of deposit of an undoubted prehistoric date, are scythes and sickles, and a mill composed of two stones resembling somewhat the pistrinum of the Romans. No implement of iron has been found in connection with the ancient civilizations of America. The mound builders appear to have wrought the rich specular ores of Missouri in the same manner as stone.—Prehistoric Monuments. Fergusson, in "Rude Stone Monuments," places little confidence in the classifications hitherto followed as a basis for establishing any historical relation with the human beings who used the objects discovered, or even for determining who they were. He proposes to classify finds according to the character of the places where they are made, and especially the degree of art exhibited in the structure of the prehistoric sepulchres from which nearly all the antiquarian objects have been taken. He maintains that the peculiarities of the mode of honoring the dead distinguish the races of mankind as definitely as speech. He classifies prehistoric sepulture as follows : I. Tumuli, a. Barrows of earth only. b. With small stone chambers or cists (microlithic). c. With chambers or dolmens formed of large stones (megalithic). d. With external access to chambers. II. Dolmens, a. Free standing dolmens without tumuli. b. Dolmens on the outside of tumuli. III. Circles, a. Circles surrounding tumuli. b. Circles surrounding dolmens, c. Circles without tumuli or dolmens. IV. Avenues. a. Avenues attached to circles. b. Avenues with or without circles or dolmens. V. Menhirs, a. Single or in groups. b. With oghams, sculptures, or runes. The earliest mode was simple inhumation, and if the deceased was of some importance a mound was raised over the grave. A sort of coffin was probably next devised, as seen in the rude cists so commonly found. In wooded countries the coffin was of wood, and, if the mound is old, perished long ago. Cists were expanded into chambers, to which at a later age passages for access were made. From the chambered tumulus sprung elaborate domed structures of either megalithic or microlithic architecture. The history of megalithic remains begins with the rude stone cists, generally called kistvaens, which by degrees became magnified into chambers, the side stones increasing from 1 ft. in height to 5 ft., and the capstone becoming a really megalithic feature, 6 to 10 ft. long by 4 or 5 ft. wide, and of considerable thickness. Many antiquaries insist, however, that all the dolmens (Celtic, daul, a table, and men or maen, a stone) or cromlechs (Celtic, crum or crom, crooked or curved, and lech, a stone) which are now standing free were once covered and buried in tumuli. The stone circles appear to have been introduced as substitutes for the circular earthen mounds which surround the early tumuli. They frequently enclose also dolmens, either standing on the level plain or on tumuli; but they are often found enclosing nothing that can be seen above ground. It is believed that the larger circles, more than 100 ft. in diameter, were not sepulchral, but cenotaphic, or temples dedicated to the honor or worship of the dead. The avenues are rows of stones, sometimes leading to circles, and are also designated as alignments or parallellitha. Those of the first class represent externally the passages in tumuli which lead to the central chamber, but it is difficult to divine the use of the avenues which are not attached to circles and do not lead to any important monuments. The menhirs, or tall stones (Celtic, men, stone, and hir, high), are stone pillars, with or without inscriptions, which gradually superseded the earthen tumuli as a record of the dead.—Of the conclusion that may be drawn from the character of finds in regard to the culture of the contemporary races, E. B. Tylor says: "The exclusive use of stone, bone, &c., for cutting and piercing implements, is in general a criterion of savage culture, though compatible with the settled and comparatively advanced state of the early Swiss lake dwellers. 2. Bronze-making indicates a more advanced and systematic civilization, up to the level of the Mexicans and Peruvians in modern, and the Aryan races in ancient times. 3. Iron-making is indispensable to high culture, but from the facility of its adoption is not of itself a proof of anything beyond a high savage state affected by intercourse with still higher conditions."—Human Remains. These have been found in surprisingly small numbers. Lyell explains their scarcity as the effect of nature's plan of disencumbering habitable areas of skeletons by means of "the heat and moisture of the sun and atmosphere, the dissolving power of carbonic and other acids, the grinding teeth and gastric juices of quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, and fish, and the agency of many of the invertebrata." The human remains regarded by eminent archæologists and osteologists as the oldest so far discovered are the fragments of the skeleton found in the Neanderthal cavern, near Düsseldorf, Germany; the fragments of a skull from Brüx, Bohemia; similar fragments of the Engis cave near Liége, Belgium; and the skeletons from a tumulus at Borreby, Denmark. The Neanderthal skull resembles that of Brüx, but is so extremely different in appearance from that of Engis, that according to Huxley it might be supposed to belong to a distant race of man- kind. Schaaffhausen and Busk speak of it as the most brutal of all known human skulls, and as greatly resembling those of apes. One of the Borreby skulls has also this resemblance, but the others are said to exhibit a much higher conformation. The Engis skull is deemed a near approach to the Caucasian type, and appears to possess at the same time a more decided claim to antiquity than that of the Neanderthal. The Borreby skulls belong to the stone period of Denmark, and the people to whom they appertained were probably either contemporaneous with or later than the makers of the kitchen middens. The Engis skull was found in one of the numerous bone caves which border the valley of the Meuse, where the remains of a number of human individuals were discovered, mingled with the bones and teeth of extinct quadrupeds, and with rude stone implements. Dupont in 1864 excavated 43 other caves in the valleys of the Lesse and the Meuse, and discovered in 25 of them numerous human remains, which he has divided into the mammoth, the reindeer, and the neolithic or polished stone period. Schaaffhausen, in his exhaustive treatise Ueber die Urform des menschlichen Schädels (Bonn, 1868), argues that the individual to whom the Neanderthal skull belonged must have had a small cerebral development, and uncommon strength of corporeal frame. One of the chief objects of the investigations as to the age of these remains is to determine whether man is pre-glacial or post-glacial. There is some reason for believing him to be pre-glacial, but not older than the later half of the pliocene period. In 1863 Desnoyers found near St. Prest fossil bones which some consider as coexistent with the elephas meridionalis, while others regard them as comparatively modern. The genuineness of the fossil man of Denise, found in central France, and alleged to have been contemporary with the same extinct animal, is questioned. The human bone of Natchez, Mississippi, which was accompanied by bones of the mastodon and megalonyx, is supported by insufficient scientific testimony; and the human remains in the loess near Maestricht, and near Strasburg, are assigned but hesitatingly to any very remote period of antiquity. The hu- man remains found in the caves of Languedoc associated with bones of extinct mammalia, and those discovered in March, 1872, by Dr. Rivière in a cave at Mentone, near Nice, may be safely considered as belonging to the post-pliocene period. The antiquity of the human bones in Belgium, as Dupont has shown in his work Les temps antéhistoriques en Belgique (Brussels, 1871), can also be accepted as dating from times anterior to the neolithic age. Count Pourtalès found human remains on the shores of Lake Monroe, in Florida, but as yet no date can be positively assigned to them. Many hypotheses have been put forward on the presumptive migrations of the prehistoric races; but in the present state of our knowledge no satisfactory conclusion can be reached. Quatrefages considers the pre-Aryan races which are typified by the human remains in the caverns of France as belonging to the Finnish family; Schaaffhausen is very decided in classifying them with the Celts; Schmerling speculates on Ethiopian affinities; and Huxley sees many analogies between these ancient inhabitants of Europe and the form, condition, and habits of the Australian races.—Besides the works referred to above and in the articles on American Antiquities, Archæology, Bone Caves, and Lake Dwellings, see Olfers, Lydische Königsgräber (Berlin, 1859); Lindenschmitt, Die Alterthümer unserer heidnischen Vorzeit (1863 et seq.); Lartet, Cavernes du Périgord, objets gravés et sculptés des temps préhistoriques dans l'Europe occidentale (Paris, 1864); Don Gongora y Martinez, Antegüedades prehistoricas (Madrid, 1868); Figuier, "Primitive Man" (1870); Virchow, Die altnordischen Schädel in Kopenhagen (Berlin, 1871); Fergusson, "Rude Stone Monuments of all Ages" (London, 1872); Evans, "Ancient Stone Implements" (London, 1872); Foster, "Prehistoric Races of the United States" (Chicago, 1873); and Rivière, Découverte d'un squelette humain de l'époque paléolithique (Paris, 1873).