Volume 16 / Part 4 — The International Congress Of Prehistoric Anthropology And Archaeology.

From La Revue Generale De Bruxelles.

The International Congress of Prehistoric Anthropology and Archæology held its sixth meeting at Brussels, in 1872. The idea of this congress originated in Italy. Some eminent Swiss, Italian, and French naturalists, assembled at Spezzia in 1865, resolved to hold the first session the following year at Neufchâtel. This meeting, entirely confined to explorations, created no sensation out of the scientific world, but it was agreed there should be another at the time of the International Exposition at Paris in 1867. The congress, thenceforth established, appointed a committee to organize the next meeting. More than four hundred savants responded to the invitation. At Paris it was decided to meet again the next year at Norwich, at the same time as the British Association for the Advancement of Science. The programme of questions proposed for discussion at Norwich presents a striking similarity to that at Paris. The congress held at Copenhagen in 1869 was distinguished by a more local and practical character than the preceding. Finally, the Congress of Bologna, in 1871, enlarged still more the extent of its programme; according, however, the first place to objects that particularly interested Italy.

The programme of the Congress of Brussels was, so to speak, determined by M. E. Dupont's important discoveries in the caverns of the province of Namur, and the questions were drawn up from the Belgian point of view, in order to give our savants an opportunity of acquainting foreign scientific men with the researches and facts relating particularly to our country. Similar proceedings had taken place at Copenhagen and Bologna. But the programme of Brussels by no means excluded points of general interest. Here is the list of those proposed:

I. What discoveries have been made in Belgium to attest the antiquity of prehistoric man?

II. What were the manners and pursuits of the people who lived in the caverns of Belgium? Did their manners and pursuits vary during the quaternary epoch? What analogy is there between their manners and pursuits, and those of the troglodyte [pg 640] population in other parts of Western Europe and of the savages of the present day?

III. What were the pursuits of the people who inhabited the plains of Hainault during the quaternary epoch? Can it be proved they held any communication with their contemporaries of the caverns of the provinces of Liége and Namur, or with the quaternary peoples of the valleys of the Somme and the Thames?

IV. What characterized the age of polished stone in Belgium? What was its connection with previous ages, and with the age of polished stone in Western Europe?

V. What were the anatomical and ethnical characteristics of man in Belgium during the age of stone?

VI. What characterized the age of bronze in Belgium?

VII. What characterized the appearance of iron in Belgium?

Excursions to the caverns of the valleys of the Lesse, the flint-works of Spiennes and Mesvin, and the entrenched camp of Hastedon near Namur, formed a practical demonstration of the problems discussed at the meeting.

Many illustrious co-workers responded to the invitation of the Committee of Arrangements. England was represented by Messrs. Prestwich, Owen, the great palæontologist, Dawkins, Lubbock, Franks, the Director of the Department of Antiquities and Ethnography at the British Museum, etc.; France, by her most eminent anthropologists, archæologists, and geologists, Messrs, Quatrefages, Broca, Belgrand, Hébert, De Mortillet and Bertrand of the Musée de S. Germain, General Faid'herbe, the Marquis de Vibraye, Cartaillac, De Linas, Doctors Lagneau et Hamy, one President and the other Secretary of the Society of Anthropology, Deshayes, Gaudry, Gervais, the Abbés Bourgeois and Delauny, one Superior and the other Professor at the College of Pont-Levoy, Oppert, the celebrated explorer of Khorsabat, and many others, among whom we must not omit the inevitable Mlle. Clemence Royer, at least as a curiosity. The northern countries sent the founders of prehistoric archæology in the North—Messrs. Worsaœ, Engelhardt, De Wichfeld, Steenstrup, Waldemar-Schmidt, from Denmark; Messrs. Hildebrand, Landberg, Lagerberg, Nillson, D'Oliviecrona, from Sweden; Italy was brilliantly represented by Messrs. Capellini, Fabretti, Biondelli, Count Conestabile, Gozzadini, etc.; Spain and Portugal by only a few; Holland by several, among whom was M. Leemans, Director of the Museum of Leyden; Austria by Count Wurmbrand; Germany by the Baron de Ducker, Professors Fraas, of Stuttgart, Schafthausen, of Bonn, the celebrated Virchow, of Berlin, Lindenschmidt, of Mayence; Switzerland by Desor, one of the founders of prehistoric archæology. Belgian science was represented in the committee by Messrs. d'Omalius d'Halloy, the venerable President of the congress, Van Beneden, De Witte, Dupont, with the élite of our savants, attended by a constellation of archæologists de circonstance belonging to the various orders of the literary, artistic, and political world, and even the commercial; for philosophy does not daunt M. Jourdain in these days. As for the rest, it was a spectacle of no slight interest to behold the extraordinary concourse of hearers that thronged the sessions at the ducal palace, attentively listening to discussions sometimes very abstract, and again participating in the excursions of the learned assembly with a genuine interest apart from the mere pleasure of the excursions themselves. In [pg 641] proportion as man adds to his knowledge of the globe he inhabits, instead of being satisfied, the greater ardor and interest he manifests to know more. “The surface of both land and water explored in every sense of the word; mountains measured; oceans sounded, and their secrets brought to light; inorganic substances and organized bodies analyzed and described; plants, animals, and the human races studied under every aspect; historical traditions investigated and revised; the dead languages brought into use, and the words derived from them traced back to their original roots—all this is not enough. Knowing what he is, and with a thousand theories as to his destination, man wishes to pierce the mystery of his origin; he asks whence he came, and how he began the career so laboriously pursued, and into which he was thrust by a destiny of which he had no consciousness.”219 The truths that we grasp in our day were perhaps only guessed at by the ancients. Lucretius has drawn a very correct picture, for those days, of the wretched condition of the earlier races, their struggles with the elements, and even the primitive weapons of stone which they wrought before the age of bronze and iron. But this is only a poetical conception to which must be attached no more importance than it merits. The science of prehistoric ages then had no existence. This science, scarcely known twenty years ago, has now quite a literature of its own, several reviews, and an annual International Congress (in future it will be biennial), splendid museums in all our capitals, and a society whose labors have contributed not a little to so prodigious a result—the Society of Anthropology.

Some persons are troubled at the discussion of grave and delicate questions that seem to set revelation and science at variance. As for us, who can never admit the possibility of a conflict between the Bible and nature—those two divine revelations—or that they ought ever to be completely separated, we deeply regret the complete absence of our clergy at these great sessions, while those of France and Italy were represented in a brilliant manner.

“I am well aware,” says M. Chabas, in an able preface, “that the materialistic tendency of savants of very considerable attainments in anthropology and other branches of prehistoric research, withholds many men whose concurrence would be of value to science from entering the arena where such points are discussed.” But timid minds are becoming more reassured. Therefore, as the Abbé Bourgeois happily remarked at the Congress of Paris, “We shall perhaps have to add to the antiquity of man, but we ought also to detract from that of fossils.” Besides, hitherto, in spite of so much research, man alone has been found intelligent and with a moral sense of his acts; and in the animal kingdom there is not a single proof to confirm even remotely Lamarck's theory of transmutation revived by Darwin. When so many are appealing to science to the exclusion of God from the universe, it would be well for others to endeavor to make him manifest by the aid of science.

“What!” exclaims Mgr. Meignan, in his brilliant work on The World and Primitive Man according to the Bible, “ought the exegete to make no account of the progress of human knowledge? Can the savant find neither profit nor light in the wisdom of Holy Writ? We think otherwise. The theologian who first studies nature [pg 642] will be better enabled to explain certain passages of the Bible; and the naturalist and archæologist, in their turn, will find it advantageous to study the real meaning of Genesis.” The human mind enters upon a course of examination more or less legitimate in subjecting religion itself to the trial of controversy; it is almost a duty imposed on the conscience of all who are not vainly endowed with reason to enable themselves to give a reason for the belief that is within them. “The task of the apologist,” says the eminent prelate just quoted, “is never at an end in our restless age.” The disagreement that some seem to apprehend only exists in superficial or sceptical minds.

If the Bible is not a scientific revelation, neither does it contradict science, and especially in the bold outlines drawn by Moses. Science, as it progresses, sets up its landmarks, so to speak, beside the immutable bounds of faith; it is so with the laws of light, as well as the fundamental principles of geology. Revelation assigns no limits to the antiquity of the world, and allows the beginning in which God created it to recede to as remote a period as is wished, and geology corroborates the Scripture account of successive creations. Is not the unity of origin of the human species, distinctly declared in both Testaments, connected with all the hypotheses that have excited so much opposition in our day? I do not mean the unity of the human species, a doctrinal question very different from the other, and not necessarily connected with it. But the unity of origin of the human race is now taught and demonstrated by the greater part of those versed in natural history; it is a scientific truth. As to the existence of man in the tertiary epoch, it is far from certain, though sustained by many highly respectable men.220 M. Evans, the Secretary of the Geological Society of London, whose name is an authority on things pertaining to anthropology and palæontology, expressed himself in these terms at a meeting of the British Association at Liverpool last year [1871]: “We cannot,” said he, “possibly make any prediction as to the discoveries that still await us in the soil beneath our feet; but we certainly have no reason to conclude that the most ancient traces of man on the earth, or even on the soil of Western Europe, have been brought to light. At the same time, I must confess that the existing evidence of man in the miocene period, and even in the pliocene, in France (it will be seen further on that this has since been asserted in Portugal), appears to me, after the most careful examination on the spot, very far from convincing.”

Besides, the word prehistoric has only a relative exactness of meaning. In Belgium, prehistoric man comes down to the century before the Roman Conquest. A vast number of the monuments and remains so discussed in our day might be included in the historic period. In most cases, too absolute a signification is given to the word prehistoric, conveying an idea of remote antiquity far beyond the bounds of chronology. It is under the influence of this preconceived opinion that the most distinguished [pg 643] and independent investigators have allowed themselves to be carried away with the apparent revelation of an entirely new world. In hearing of the millions of ages attributed to quaternary man, one feels greatly behind the times, and asks himself anxiously if there really is a science that has a good right to make man so old, and that affords means of ascertaining, as has been stated, what our ancestors were observing in the heavens on the 29th of January, 11,542 years before Christ. This feeling of astonishment must be still livelier in those for whom the insoluble problems of antiquity extend back to less than two thousand years. We do not know the site of Alesia, and we pretend to know the habitat and manners of villages of more than three hundred thousand years before the downfall of the Gallic nationality! It should be confessed that the science which has so recently sprung up, and which has for its object the study of human labor anterior to the use of metals, is neither so firmly established nor so positive in its deductions that we should blindly accept such bold theories. This is one of the reasons that should encourage more men of serious pursuits to take a part in these debates, as to which it is allowable to hope that the truth will some day be discovered at an equal distance from any exaggeration.

We shall have occasion to return to these questions which occupied the Congress of Brussels. This preamble appeared necessary as a justification for confining ourselves to a plain, simple analysis of the proceedings of the congress—others can review them better than we.

We will only add one word more. The field for discussion had been prepared in a wonderful manner by the recent publication of the excellent work in which the learned and active director of our Royal Museum of Natural History has condensed his researches.221

The opening session took place the 22d of August. The day was spent in receptions, speeches of welcome, replies, the installation of the board, and other official courtesies which we spare the reader. The following days there were two sessions a day. The morning of the 23d of August was devoted to the first question in the programme. There was no one better fitted to develop it than M. Dupont, the Chief Secretary of the congress, and the most active of its organizers. He had already given a clear outline of its history in his discourse at the first session of the day before. It was started in Belgium in 1829, and kept up by the researches of Schmerling, who may be regarded as the Champollion of prehistoric anthropology; but our illustrious fellow-citizen was not encouraged in his discoveries, and it may be said that he was, to a certain degree, a martyr to the scientific prejudices of his time. His labors, occurring at a time when Cuvier's authority was at its height, could not counterbalance the influence of that great genius, who declared that man could not be found among fossils' bones, and that the vestiges of the human race in the caverns came under the general rule. No one then could have dreamed of referring these remains to the epoch of the mammoth, and it was scarcely admitted, till within a dozen years, that man was contemporary with the animals of the geological periods which preceded ours. Schmerling, but little befriended by circumstances, was deceived as to what caused the introduction of this débris into the [pg 644] caverns. He attributed it to sudden inundations. Some years later, Mr. Spring opened the way to the true theory, which allows the reconstruction of the ethnography of geological epochs; but he could not continue his researches, and it was not till 1861 that Lartet's report concerning the caverns of Aurillac at length established a collection of decisive facts. In 1863, M. Dupont was appointed to explore the caverns of the province of Namur, which gave promise of discoveries of unusual interest; it was important that our country, after having taken so large a part in establishing the first principles of this new science, should not remain inactive in the movement to which it had led. The immense result of researches continued without relaxation for seven years, summer and winter, and the valuable remains thus found, which are the ornament of our principal museum, prove that the direction of the task could not have been confided to better hands.

M. Dupont, laying aside the arbitrary classifications that had hitherto been adopted for determining the antiquity of remains found in caverns, introduced the geologic method in his researches, which is founded upon principles almost incontestable and evidences of indubitable truth. The chronological data furnished by this method are generally of mathematical exactitude. “With this point to start from,” says M. Dupont, “I was sure of clearly determining the fauna and ethnographical remains of each epoch to which the objects discovered in the various subterranean explorations belonged.”222 In pursuing the application of this method, our young and already illustrious savant was enabled to show the evolution of physical and biological phenomena, and to reconstruct the ethnography of the age of stone. Whatever may be thought of the reality of the facts brought forward, it must be confessed that no ordinary mind could have formed such bold conceptions.

After a communication from Dr. Hamy on the flint-works of France and England at the time of the mammoth, the Abbé Bourgeois discussed the question of tertiary man. The learned professor's clear, fluent language, the distinction of his manners, and his open, animated countenance [pg 645] so completely won the goodwill of the audience that thenceforth, whenever he spoke, his appearance in the tribune was hailed with unanimous applause.

The Abbé Bourgeois and M. de Launay, his colleague, are the true heralds of tertiary man. The chronological discussion they so boldly excite seems to embarrass them but little; on the other hand, they almost banish the hope some still seem to cling to of finding the man-monkey. In 1866, M. Bourgeois described and presented to the Academy of Sciences some wrought flints found in the tertiary deposits in the commune of Thenay near Pont-Levoy (Loir-et-Cher). M. Desnoyers had already, in 1863, pointed out bones found in strata incontestably pliocene, on which were striæ, or very distinct and regularly marked incisions. Worked flints are beginning to be found, we are assured, in the bottom of the calcareous deposits of Beauce; that is to say, in chalk. They are identical in form with those found on the surface; as in other places, there are utensils for cutting, piercing, scraping, and hammering. Many of these instruments have been injured by the action of fire. Finally, says the Abbé Bourgeois, “I find in them almost every proof of man's agency, to wit: after-touches, symmetrical grooves, grooves artificially made to correspond with natural ones, and especially the multiplied reproduction of certain forms. This is a peculiar, unheard-of fact of the highest importance, but, to me, an indubitable one.” M. Bourgeois exhibited to the competent judges assembled at Brussels what he considered the proofs of the authenticity of his discovery. To him they are convincing, but what he seeks, above all, is truth, and he asked that a special committee be appointed to elucidate the question. This committee pronounced a verdict two days after, without deciding the point. Of thirty-two specimens presented for examination, some appeared to them evidently wrought, but most of them were unanimously rejected. There was no difference of opinion as to M. Bourgeois' sincerity of belief, but they were divided as to the authenticity of the deposit. Those who have seen the place had no doubts; the remainder were incredulous. M. Capellini proposed that a new committee be appointed to make researches on the spot. The general conclusion was that no solution is at present possible.

The existence of prehistoric man in Greece next became the subject of lively discussion, giving rise to the most contradictory opinions. The conclusion was that there are no decided proofs. The same doubt was manifested with respect to a skull from California, said to have been found in tertiary formation. It is not even certain it is a human skull.

The second session of the day opened with an account from M. Rivière of the discovery of a complete skeleton in a grotto at Menton, found among the remains of various animals of the quaternary epoch, such as the lion, bear, rhinoceros, etc. Then M. de Mortillet gave a detailed description of the fauna, and the utensils, arms, pursuits, manners, and even the first manifestation of art, of man in the quaternary period, and he proposed a still further subdivision of the classes than is now admitted. The speaker mentioned a very singular circumstance calculated to excite reflection—an inexplicable hiatus between the last period of the age of cut stone and the age of polished stone, in which new races appeared of greater industry and more intelligence, agriculture was developed, [pg 646] the industrial pursuits were extended, and art disappeared. It is the era of lacustrine villages and of dolmens. M. de Mortillet's sketch of prehistoric civilization was picturesque but far from convincing.

The Abbé Bourgeois did not think M. de Mortillet's classification correct, because the progress of civilization in France and Belgium was unequal. “The Belgians,” he said, “were more advanced.” And the orator added with charming bonhomie: “I cannot say it is otherwise now.”

M. Fraas, professor at Stuttgart, stated that he had made some explorations in the grotto of Hollenfelz near Ulm, in Würtemberg. The Homo unius cavernæ was refuted in his conclusions by M. Hébert, the celebrated professor at the Sorbonne, and by other savants. M. d'Omalius was of the opinion that two geologists of different countries, desirous of identifying beds contiguous to their fields of exploration, were never able to agree. Between two strata there are always deposits that partake of the distinctive characteristics of both.

We pass from the grave to the entertaining. The following day, at seven o'clock in the morning, all the learned assembly, glad, it may be imagined, to get away from the pretentious paintings of the ducal palace, took flight by steam for the valley of the Lesse. We would be the first to confess that, if the country excited the sincere admiration of the excursionists, the latter were equally a delightful source of curiosity to the native inhabitants. They will not readily forget the picturesque sight of our long caravan traversing the good town of Dinant all decked out with flags, parading in elegant equipages lost among the coucous, fiacres, and calèches of wondrous construction, or perched on the imperials of the most extraordinary vehicles, omnibuses, and pataches truly prehistoric, filing along the banks of the Meuse towards the valleys amid laughter, jests, joltings, and the vociferations of our Automedon. Charming landscapes, but detestable roads. This region has been so often described that I need not attempt to depict it; it is with the pencil and brush it should be undertaken. Sometimes the road winds around with disagreeable undulations through the deep ravines bordered by apple-trees whose fruit-laden branches sweep the imperials of the carriages, endangering the silken hat; sometimes rolling over broad grassy roads walled in by immense cliffs crowned with ruins and verdure, or affording vistas through the neighboring valleys, lit up by the sun streaming through the woods with a mild radiance that recalls the Elysian Fields of mythological memory. At length we come to the Lesse, which bars the way with its clear, rapid current. The carriages have to ford the capricious and petulant waters of the little winding torrent. The horses sheer in the very middle of the stream, causing a deafening noise of laughter, shouts of alarm, and blows of the whip. All ends by crossing without any great difficulty, but the same scene is reproduced five or six times with varied incidents; for there are that number of fords to cross. It was in one of these places, where we were obliged to cross the river in boats in order to reach the grottoes, that we saw the overloaded skiff capsized that bore among others M. d'Omalius and Mlle. Royer. The apostle of woman's emancipation clung with shrill screams to the neck of a small gentleman, her chevalier servant for the time, and, when she found a footing with the water up to her chin, she contributed somewhat to save her assistant [pg 647] by keeping his head out of water—a fine opportunity for quoting La Fontaine, with a kind variation: “That is nothing; it is not a woman that is drowning.” The nonagenarian president of the congress was taken out safe and sound, and it was with extreme difficulty he was induced to change his chaussures, but nothing could prevail upon him to accept dry garments. Happily, the weather was superb, and the shipwrecked travellers could get dry in the sun.

We returned by way of the plateaux that overlook the valley. Nothing could be imagined more fantastically beautiful than that immense panorama bathed in the purple light of the setting sun. The visitors, under the guidance of M. Dupont, had been through all the principal caverns described in his book. His learned explanations were greatly relished, and added a keen interest to an excursion of which the unexpected and the amusing had heightened the charm. We will not speak of the banquet that crowned so delightful a day, or of the ovations that were lavished on the savants and others. For such details, we refer you to the newspapers that published the reports.

To Be Concluded In Our Next Number.