Man before metals / by N. Joly.

  • Nicolas Joly
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Man before metals / by N. Joly. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    bark fibre, and later textile plants fumished the sewing thread. AU thesô customs, cannibalism and human sacrifice excepted, resemble those of tbe Eskimos, of the Green- landers, and especially of the Siberian Tshouktschis, who,. hardly a century ago, still dwelt in caves, whose entrance they closed with reindeer skins, ignoring the use of metals, and employing sharp stones, bone fish-hooks, pikes armed with pointed bones, and utensils of wood or leather.* The women used the split tendons of quadrupêds and needles of fish-bone to sew their clothing of skins. We hâve seen that the troglodytes of Périgord employed délicate per- forated bone needles for the same purpose. The family and the society were also organised among the latter, even in the reindeer âge. If vre accept the explanation given by Edward Lartet, of the omamented and perforated instruments which he calls wands of office, and if we consider with him that the number of holes indicates the varions degrees of authority, there were already chiefs and subjects. After having sheltered the' living, the caves became the last resting-place of the dead. With them were buried the weapons, the omaments, the articles of every kind which they had used during their life on earth, and which they were to employ in that other life of which even the dweller in the caves seems to hâve had a vague presentiment. For the rest, he had a barely rudimentary notion of the divinity, a rude fetichism, some absmd superstitions ; but no religion worthy of the name, no idiom, of which any remains, however mutilated, hâve corne down to us. With regard to the troglodytes who, during the âge of polished stone, dwelt in the Pyrenean caves of Ariège, they undoubtedly had attained to a degree of civilisation far more advanced than that at which the inhabitants of the caves, of the âge of the mammoth and reindeer, came to a stand. • See the interesting details upon this subject given by M. L. Lartet in bis paper npon Une SéjMlUtre des Animaux Troglodytes des Pyrénées,
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