Cave Hunting

ological Classification.-Caves of the Iron Age.-Caves of the Bronze Age in Britain.-The C

tween Historic an

nglish or Danes, and happened before our own time, but that the interval which separates it from those events can be accurately measured by the unit of years. If, however, we attempt to ascertain the date of any event which happened outside the historical limit, we shall find that it is a question solely of relation. When we speak, for example, of the neolithic age, we merely

supported a large population, and when glaciers crowned some of the higher mountains of Africa, such as the Atlas, the European and Egyptian climates were probably moister than at the present time, and the rainfall and the floods greater, and consequently the accumulation of sediment quicker than the observed rate under the present conditions. And in the same way all estimates of the lapse of past time, based upon the excavation of a river valley, or the retrocession of a waterfall, such as Niagara, lie open to the same kind of objection. It is not at all reasonable to suppose that the complex conditions which regulate the present rate of erosion, have been

histori

also the Urus, reverted to feral conditions, just as the horses and oxen, in the Americas and Australia, have done at the present time, and their remains are therefore frequently found in association with animals undoubtedly wild. The domestic horse, the variety of hog descended from the wild boar, and the domestic cattle derived from the Urus, may possibly have passed under the yoke of man,137 in Europe, since their wild stocks were to be found in that area, both in the prehistoric and pleistocene times. This, however, cannot be

s on piles in the Swiss lakes, among which some, such as the two kinds of millet, the six-rowed barley (hordeum hexastichon), the Egypti

moose (Cervus alces), and the reindeer. The two last are far more abundant in the north than in the south of Britain; their remains have been discovered in the neighbourhood of London, those of b

e moose, or true elk, is the only wild species which has not been prov

species which were living during the latter period. The cave bear, woolly rhinoceros, and mammoth, for example, became extinct, the musk-sheep and lemming were banished from a tempera

ogical Clas

, and had found it to be the most convenient material for the manufacture of cutting weapons and implements. Before this the voice of tradition points out that bronze was the only material used for these purposes, and stone before b

aces. And it is a well-ascertained fact, that while the inhabitants of Britain and Scandinavia were in their bronze age, the Etruscans and Ph?nicians were in their full power in the south. It is obvious again, that, even in the same country, the poorer classes must have been long content to use the ruder and more common materials for their daily needs, while the richer and more powerful used the rarer and more costly. These three ages must therefore necessarily overlap. "Like

or cutting, and the pal?olithic, in which mankind had not learnt to grind and polish his implements. The latter belongs to the pleistocene,

2, those containing proof of the knowledge of bronze; 3, and lastly, those in which traces of polished stone weapons have been discovered unassociated with metals. By the animal

ons of Australia, although it is fast being replaced by iron, which has superseded bronze, and is spreading rapidly over the whole earth. The group of historic cav

t rarely used as habitations. Man had sufficiently advanced in civilization in those times to construct artificial dwellings and tombs

the Ir

ngled with charcoal, and containing numerous broken bones and teeth. The latter belonged to the wolf, fox, badger, rabbit, hare, stag, goat, and Celtic shorthorn. In the lower portion were the fragments of a rude, unornamented urn of a coarse black ware, with the rim turned at right angles, along with a bent piece of iron, which bears a strong resemblance to those found strengthening the corners of wooden coffins in the Gallo-Roman graves on the banks of the Somme. The fractures of t

e Bronze Ag

as being partially traversed by water. Since its discovery in 1861, it has been altogether destroyed by the removal of the stone to be used as a flux in smelting the ore of the Weardale Iron Company, and an admirable section of its contents was therefore visible from time to time. A stratum of sand at the bottom, two feet n

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nife, Heathery Bu

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nze Armlet,

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Spearhead, Heath

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Mould for castin

er side of the watercourse, a bronze143 spear-head. Subsequently, many articles were added to the above list, seven pins, three rings, two split-rings, a "razor," disk, three socketed celts, one chisel, two gouges, and four spear-heads of bronze, and a fine bracelet, and two ornaments of the horse-shoe, or split-ring type, made of thin plates of gold. One of the spear-heads, in the collection of the Rev. Canon Greenwell, is represented in Fig. 34. There were also waste pieces of bronze, and the half of a bronze mould for casting celts, Fig. 35, in which one of the associated c

Muskham, in the valley of the Trent,-to a form which he terms the River-bed type, and that cannot be separated from those obtained

5 obtained by Mr. Carrington, of Wetton. The rarity of bronze implements in caves in Britain and the Continent is probably, to a large extent, due to the value of the material, and to the fact that it could be re-melted. If

red pottery marked with a string, cut bones, a stone muller, and a bronze socketed celt. The last is of the same pattern as some of those in the col

reda probably occ

rable to the dawn of the bronze age, render it very probable

on the stalagmite, and contained fragments of charcoal, one implement of bone, and many of flint, a scraper, a flake, and an arrow-head. The broken bones and teeth belonged to the following animals:-The lynx, fox, brown-bear, dog and wolf, a species of deer, the water-vole, and the r

caves of Gibraltar and the Basque graveyard, measuring in length 6·7 inches, in breadth 5·3

those of man. They were to be counted by thousands, and were so fragmentary and scattered that it was impossible147 to put together one perfect skeleton. The teeth, belonging for the most part to children or fully-grown adults, were particularly abundant. The long bones had lost, very generally, their articular ends, had been fractured longitudinally, and some of them had been cut and scraped. It is therefore probable that this accumulation was formed by a tribe of cannibals: the evidence that human flesh formed their pri

iangles and zigzag ladders, as remarked by Mr. John Evans, indicate that the upper deposit belongs to the age of bronze, an

econd case of the practice of cannibalism, according to M. Sc

4

f Reggio,

m to be proofs of cannibalism, are probably merely the result of interment in a refuse-heap that had previously been accumulated. They were associated with bronze pins, rivets, polished-stone

ance and Spain, but they are not sufficiently important to require notice. We could not expect that men, in the high state of civilization implied by the beautiful