Newspaper Page Text
Our Tun
The “Clubman”
Sneaking Home
in the Wee
Smell Hours .
of a Primeval xffl
Morning.
f Jj|RX 'W
>
\ r ■'■ - ■
BF
Ei *'
HEy
r ' : - '
■
¥ •
L‘
&
■pl "'V
T—iVFRY ° ,,e more <>r less 10,,k ’
Lback u|>ou our prehistoric in
fancy as a time of terrific
bloodshed and brutality.
The cave-man has been depicted as
constantly going about with a club
In his hand anc murder in his heart.
Men’s lives, and their wives, it has
been understood, were then at the
mercy of whomever was strong
enough to take them.
The condition of the cave-woman
was particularly distressing, it has
been thought, indeed, that Cupid’s t
target in those days was the head
k v ■ /;< ■ j- '
*
MR
•' d
t .
■ 0 fliti B« SB
® I < -W ' Musician of the Cave-Age Stoned to Death, Possibly for Piaying “The Maiden’s Prayer.”
/ i ./•///// z Kii.\ ...
/ W . \
rather than the heart, and that the
Current method of popping the ques
tion was to club tlie chosen one into
insensibility, the courtship compris
ing tlie period between the time she
fell and the time she was dragged
into the cave of her captor.
it Is a depressing picture that has
been drawn of our naive and cloth
less childhood. tlie only redeeming
f
s $
ISBYv J v-S. YV Vj
bv-' - ■' .
3tjs $' . '■ ~. 'f* y
-V\
“The cup that cheered when the world was young consi.ted of brain* .tewed
with pottage in the original cup.’*
■ ,4’? ’V£ ■ ''’ ’ ;, i
v- ■■' Ww
Tk ■ ' n
■ »r?
F Rich ("Yllr’) And
W omen Wore i
Just as Funny
Hats as Now!
feature about it being that it isn’t
true! At least, according to a re
markable series of analyses made by
Professor De Foux, an eminent au
thority on matters prehistoric, the
ancient dwellings of the cave-dwell
ers in Europe indicate that a mill
ion years ago we lived and loved
pretty much as we io now.
M. De Foux has discovered that
we were not shaggy, brutal people, of
a color indeterminable, because we
had not shed our ape like hair, and
we did not have pointed ears. On
the contrary, we were white, had
smooth skins and ears very much
like those of to-day. Incidentally,
we all had red hair, a fact which In-
dicates that those of us who to-day
have rod hair are more or less a
reversion to our cave-age type, and
explains the illy governed tempers,
the sudden tits of passion and the
generally heated temperament which
we have come to associate with
auburn tresses.
“Our skeletons and the shape ot
our heads do not differ very much
to-day from those of the old days.
The Neanderthal skull and other
human skulls of apparent ape-like
formation were not representative of
us at all,” Kays M. De Foux. “They
were simply low elements in the
clan, probably murderers or idiots,
and wo can find men in all great
Torturing the Mammoth, a Great
Joke ( Ju ßuUßing hc ) Stoning Bad Musicians
to Death
w
V a Favorite
S T < 3 C e/' B ’ e stin E "\
A Had Actors )
’-• T">
Buying
F Fossil
Shells the
Delight of the
citles whose
heads are very
much the same
as those brutal
looking skulls.'’
The cave-men
even had a
sense of humor
The French
scientist gives
some extraordi
nary Instances
of our jokes of a million years ago.
Ihoy have been perpetuated in the
shape of bones, skeletons. pits, draw
ings on the walls o caves and other
fragnumts of those ancient days
wnich have been found in the dwell-
»
Ings of the cave-men.
The "ave-men, it is found, were
fond of music. Instcnd of resorting
to their dens nt night to escape the
saber-toothed tiger or the unclad
gentlemen with a stone, they sat
around the tire and listened to their
musicians
It is true that their musical in
struments were not exactly the kind
favored by our symphony orchestras,
.1, . Bt least tlley made a noise,
wnich is as much as some of our
twentieth century artists accomplish.
rhe principal musical Instrument
or this period consisted of a rein
deer’s foot with a hole bored in it,
which made a serviceable whistle.
On the rude instrument a
C’opvrfrhf 1!I1? hr Arrrrlran OrMt Britain R!rM« Br«*rveft,
mm « f \wcfrjK
H ■ ~~ ► rrw ••>■'• --7
•..«.< \ 7SIi
•.'•>-^x ; • ' '/ZK\h •//
B •■: v\ ./ A\A /?••■• \Xk
••' '■ \W3£A \z V' , ( itfl omM&s
!' ■ Z'fkL- ,y y.'' .. ••• > ■••;■ e^s., -■ / X' v < \. ■■ '-i - .'’’r .;-z / ■--' r ;■■'«. ■ V- ; ’'*•■> '» f '
■ -ww'
Mobbing the Mammoth’’ One of the Principal Pastimes of the Cave-Men.
range of five notes and two
octaves was possible.
One can imagine the
cave-man musician stand
ing before the tire, sur
rounded by a horde of ad
miring music-lovers, toot
ing away on the whistle,
accompanied by another
who thumped two large
pieces of wood together,
while the birds, monkeys
and other denizens of the
forest primeval supplied
an active if somewhat dis
cordant chorus.
And woe betide the un
lucky performer whose
toots were not shrill
enough or whose thumps
were not loud enough to
satisfy his critical audi
ence. for in those days, it
would seem, ft was
garded as a huge joke to
pelt the incompetent mu
sician with boulders weigh
ing anywhere from three
to twenty pounds. By the time
the shower of stones ceased the
footer had tooted his last toot Ha
would never offend again.
In this custom of the cave-man
doubtlessly we have the origin of our
own penchant for throwing eggs, de
clining fruit and similar messages of
regard at the actors who fail to
please us. and the baseball fan who
attracts the attention of an offend
ing umpire by hurling a bottle at his
head is only doing just what we ad
were doing a million years ago
How do we know this?
Because M. De Foux has found in
the valley of the Vezere, in south
western France, which seems to have
been the site of a huge colony of
cave-men, an amphitheatre contain
ing the skeleton of one of those prim
eval musicians. The poor fellow
must have been a very bad musician,
indeed, for his skeleton was simply
covered with the boulders. Beside
him lay ids little reindeer whistle,
while a few feet away lay the
chunks of wood with which a more
fortunate musician no doubt accom
panied him.
From the position of his body
there Is no doubt that he was stoned
to death, the only question remain
ing to be settled being the nature
of his particular offense. It has been
suggested that lie may have been
unwise enough to have rendered
'The Maiden's Prayer,” In which
event, of course, even a modern jury
would have returned a verdict of
justifiable homicide.
That these early ancestor, of ours
found amusement in vaudeville
performances of a sort not very
different from those of to-day <s in
dicated by numerous drawings
rudely carved on the wails of their
caves, on the antlers and bones of
reindeer, mammoth ivory and stones.
The main attraction of these per
formances seems to have been the
torturing of the mammoth. Pic
tures of the huge beast safely con-
•' . ./i M A
fined in a pit just big enough to
bold him. with cave-men assailing
him with stones and arrowheads
are numerous.
. This pastime of “mobbing the
mammoth” evidently filled our
early ancestors with as much de
light as the modern bull fight
affsrds our Spanish and Mexican
friends, for the carvings show that
the ’unction was well attended by
spectators of both sexes.
According to M. De Foux. our
troglodytic ancestors were club
men in more senses than one.
There is plenty of evidence of their
convivial gatherings, and though
the cup that cheered their prehis
toric souls was nothing more invit
ing than the skulls of their enemies,
containing a brew of brains and
pottage, it seems to have answered
the purpose very well. In a cave
at Gourdan, France, have been dug
up several of these broken skills
bearing the marks of flint knives.
It 13 thought likely that (after the
manner of some modern savages)
these skulls were used as drinking
cups, and the brains they had con
tained were mixed in pottage and
partaken of as a great delicacy.
This is a common practise among
the head-hunters of the Philippines.
That this concoction had an in
tox’cating effect is quite probable,
for rente of the pictures on the
cave walls portraying groups of
these early bon vivants imbibing
from the skulls Indicate that some
of the participants in the orgy were
dec’dedly “under the weather.’’
How our inebriated forebears
managed to find their way home
after a celebration ot this kind may
better be imagined than described,
it could not have been the easiest
as - under the most favorable cir
cumstances to make one’.-: way over
the enormous boulders which
“ rked the path to their crude
” ve dwellings, but with a cargo of
hraivstew aboard in the bargain
h ( t journey must have been diffl
cult ‘in the extreme. One can
imrrine. . perhaps. the enraged
snouse in the cave lying in wait for
her erring chief, with a boulder in
one band and the jawbone of a
cn ve bear in the other, peering
through the small opening which
formed the entrance at the con
vivlal cave man directing hl* zig
rac rootsteps toward his humble
dwni.ing in the wee. small hours
of a i rimeval morning!
Recent research reveals .too, that
onr cave-dwellers were not unfa
miliar with the pains of various
diseases which afflict the present
generation. One may well imagine
that they became more or less im
mune to colds by reason of their
constant exposure to the elements,
but that they suffered from dyspep
sia. tout and rheumatism is amply
confl-med by the thickened condi
tion of their joints and similar sig
nificant symptoms presented by
thei’ skeletons.
And if one imagines that the
mandates of Dame Fashion are all
of modern origin, the investiga
tions cf M. De Foux would seem to
lnd’’ate that the idea is quite
erroneous.
It may have been modesty which I
imp.’lled the cave-woman to clothe i
he’- nakedness but It was cer- >
tninly vanity which suggested the 1
elaborate costumes In which she at
tired herself at times.
Tnese garments would hardlv do ■
credit to a Paquin or a Lucile, but
the' must have appeared really
worii. rful to the primitive minds
of the time. They were made of the
skins of reindeer, made supple by
rubbing them with marrow, and
afte- being scraped and smoothed
were cut in accordance with the
preva'iing fashion of the moment
and sewed together with bone
needles and tendon threads. Many
of the scrapers and smoothers em
ployea in preparing the hides have
beep, .ound in the caves and marks
of hint knives on reindeer leg
bone; show where the tendons
were detached for the purpose
mentioned. The bone needles have
been found in large numbers. They
were not much longer than the
steel needles used to-day, and were
pierced with eyes.
For ornamentation these gowns
were decorated with various Kinds
of marine shells, the teeth of bears
and tigers, plates of ivory and
beads of clay dried in the sun and
coloied with various pigments.
Fragments of necklaces and brace
lets have been dug up in a number
of places On a skeleton tn the
7 V ”■ 1
i
Ine ’Latest Mode”
as Worn by a Cave-
Woman of Fashion.
cavern at Lav.gerie Basse were
found twenty pierced shells in
pai'-s in different parts o( the body.
Evidently they had been arranged
in a symmetrical manner on the
clo;u>i,g
But strangest ot all the recent
disci/, eries along these Pnes is the
fact that our early ancestors of the
pa't-oiithic age were antiquarians’
Fossa shells dating back to even
pai-izoic days millions of years
before the advent of the cave-men,
have been found among the oones
of itu cave-dwellers ‘ Many of
them could have come only from
the Isle of Wight. They were
doubUess regarded as precious
je.ve'r in those days and were
.'S
“Fossil shells dating back million* of year* were regarded «i preciou*
jewels by the Cave-Man. Here is the Pierpont Morgan of that day.’’
' paos; o in exchange from trios to
I trioe until they reached the vaileys
of Perigord. Only such traffic
i could account for an oyster shell
from the Red Sea dug up in an-
> oth French cave.
In these days when the chief
occupation of the men was hunting
> and fishing, the implements - I the
i chasa must have been the principal
artic es of wealth. The man who
i pos leased a dozen assorted flint
i heads may have been nonsioered
’ in moderate circumstances, while
' the ownership of a dozen reindeer
hor.i daggers would marl, a man as
i being comfortably “fixed.” What
theu must be thought of the prehis
i torio Morgan who owned 20,000
■ flint hatchets and reindeer dag
i gej-s? His cave has been found at
Chaleux, while that of the paleo
! lithic Rockefeller, recently revealed
at t erigord, contained an equally
large number of flint spearheads
and various tools made of reindeer
i ant'er.
In these two caves, too, is plenty
of ev-dence that the Morgans and
Rockefellers of the cave age w-ere
just as much lovers of art as the
magnates of the present day. Ths
caves are covered with drawings
(often in color) and with engrav
ing-i, which may be considered as
representing the very best speci
mens of primitive sculpture. They
are carved and engraved with flint
tools on bone and reindeer antler,
and on the walls represent all sorts
of animals The pictures include
whales and seals, and the likenesses
of the species we know are so ex
cellent that there is no reason to
doubt the accuracy of those of ex
tinct creatures, such as the cave
bear and the mammoth.
Altogether, these recent discov
eries indicate that the general ideas
prevailing regarding life among the
cave-dwellers are entirely errone
. ous. Although primitive in point
of civilization, there is evidence,
indeed, that they had even
veloped some notion of religion
and a future life, for they invaria
bly buried food, arms and orna
ments with their dead.
The picture of the human race in
this early stage, as science now
presents it to view, is wonderfully
vivid and striking, and indicates
that it many aspects their mode
of lite, their foibles and their fall
ings were not very different from
those of the present day.
