(* 1st edition volume 2 chapter 14 1832, and 9th edition
page 738, 1853.)
M. Tournal stated in his memoir that in the cavern of Bize, in the department of the Aude, he had found human bones and teeth, together with fragments of rude pottery, in the same mud and breccia cemented by stalagmite in which land-shells of living species were embedded, and the bones of mammalia, some of extinct, others of recent species. The human bones were declared by his fellow-labourer, M. Marcel de Serres, to be in the same chemical condition as those of the accompanying quadrupeds.*
(* "Annales des Sciences Naturelles" tome 15 1828 page 348.)
Speaking of these fossils of the Bize cavern five years later, M. Tournal observed that they could not be referred, as some suggested, to a "diluvial catastrophe," for they evidently had not been washed in suddenly by a transient flood, but must have been introduced gradually, together with the enveloping mud and pebbles, at successive periods.*
(* "Annales de Chimie et de Physique" 1833 page 161.)
M. Christol, who was engaged at the same time in similar researches in another part of Languedoc, published an account of them a year later, in which he described some human bones, as occurring in the cavern of Pondres, near Nimes, in the same mud with the bones of an extinct hyaena and rhinoceros.*
(* Christol, "Notice sur les Ossements humains des Cavernes
du Gard" Montpellier 1829.)
The cavern was in this instance filled up to the roof with mud and gravel, in which fragments of two kinds of pottery were detected, the lowest and rudest near the bottom of the cave, below the level of the extinct mammalia.
It has never been questioned that the hyaena and rhinoceros found by M. Christol were of extinct species; but whether the animals enumerated by M. Tournal might not all of them be referred to quadrupeds which are known to have been living in Europe in the historical period seems doubtful. They were said to consist of a stag, an antelope, and a goat, all named by M. Marcel de Serres as new; but the majority of palaeontologists do not agree with this opinion. Still it is true, as M. Lartet remarks, that the fauna of the cavern of Bize must be of very high antiquity, as shown by the presence, not only of the Lithuanian aurochs (Bison europaeus), but also of the reindeer, which has not been an inhabitant of the South of France in historical times, and which, in that country, is almost everywhere associated, whether in ancient alluvium or in the mud of caverns, with the mammoth.
In my work before cited,* I stated that M. Desnoyers, an observer equally well versed in geology and archaeology, had disputed the conclusion arrived at by MM. Tournal and Christol, that the fossil rhinoceros, hyaena, bear, and other lost species had once been inhabitants of France contemporaneously with Man.
(* "Principles" 9th edition page 739.)
"The flint hatchets and arrow-heads," he said, "and the pointed bones and coarse pottery of many French and English caves, agree precisely in character with those found in the tumuli, and under the dolmens (rude altars of unhewn stone) of the primitive inhabitants of Gaul, Britain, and Germany. The human bones, therefore, in the caves which are associated with such fabricated objects, must belong not to antediluvian periods, but to a people in the same stage of civilization as those who constructed the tumuli and altars."
"In the Gaulish monuments," he added, "we find, together with the objects of industry above mentioned, the bones of wild and domestic animals of species now inhabiting Europe, particularly of deer, sheep, wild boars, dogs, horses, and oxen. This fact has been ascertained in Quercy and other provinces; and it is supposed by antiquaries that the animals in question were placed beneath the Celtic altars in memory of sacrifices offered to the Gaulish divinity Hesus, and in the tombs to commemorate funeral repasts, and also from a superstition prevalent among savage nations, which induces them to lay up provisions for the manes of the dead in a future life. But in none of these ancient monuments have any bones been found of the elephant, rhinoceros, hyaena, tiger, and other quadrupeds, such as are found in caves, which might certainly have been expected had these species continued to flourish at the time that this part of Gaul was inhabited by Man."*
(* Desnoyers, "Bulletin de la Societe Geologique de France"
tome 2 page 252; and article on Caverns, "Dictionnaire
Universelle d'Histoire Naturelle" Paris 1845.)
After giving no small weight to the arguments of M. Desnoyers, and the writings of Dr. Buckland on the same subject, and myself visiting several caves in Germany, I came to the opinion that the human bones mixed with those of extinct animals, in osseous breccias and cavern mud, in different parts of Europe, were probably not coeval. The caverns having been at one period the dens of wild beasts, and having served at other times as places of human habitation, worship, sepulture, concealment, or defence, one might easily conceive that the bones of Man and those of animals, which were strewed over the floors of subterranean cavities, or which had fallen into tortuous rents connecting them with the surface, might, when swept away by floods, be mingled in one promiscuous heap in the same ossiferous mud or breccia.*
(* "Principles" 9th edition page 740.)
That such intermixtures have really taken place in some caverns, and that geologists have occasionally been deceived, and have assigned to one and the same period fossils which had really been introduced at successive times, will readily be conceded. But of late years we have obtained convincing proofs, as we shall see in the sequel, that the mammoth, and many other extinct mammalian species very common in caves, occur also in undisturbed alluvium, embedded in such a manner with works of art, as to leave no room for doubt that Man and the mammoth coexisted; Such discoveries have led me, and other geologists, to reconsider the evidence previously derived from caves brought forward in proof of the high antiquity of Man. With a view of re-examining this evidence, I have lately explored several caverns in Belgium and other countries, and re-read the principal memoirs and treatises treating of the fossil remains preserved in them, the results of which inquiries I shall now proceed to lay before the reader.
RESEARCHES, IN 1833-1834, OF DR. SCHMERLING IN THE CAVERNS NEAR LIEGE.
The late Dr. Schmerling of Liege, a skilful anatomist and palaeontologist, after devoting several years to the exploring of the numerous ossiferous caverns which border the valleys of the Meuse and its tributaries, published two volumes descriptive of the contents of more than forty caverns. One of these volumes consisted of an atlas of plates, illustrative of the fossil bones.*
(* "Recherches sur les Ossements fossiles decouverts dans
les Cavernes de la Province de Liege", Liege 1833-1834.)
Many of the caverns had never before been entered by scientific observers, and their floors were encrusted with unbroken stalagmite. At a very early stage of his investigations, Dr. Schmerling found the bones of Man so rolled and scattered as to preclude all idea of their having been intentionally buried on the spot. He also remarked that they were of the same colour, and in the same condition as to the amount of animal matter contained in them, as those of the accompanying animals, some of which, like the cave-bear, hyaena, elephant, and rhinoceros, were extinct; others, like the wild cat, beaver, wild boar, roe-deer, wolf, and hedgehog, still extant. The fossils were lighter than fresh bones, except such as had their pores filled with carbonate of lime, in which case they were often much heavier. The human remains of most frequent occurrence were teeth detached from the jaw, and the carpal, metacarpal, tarsal, metatarsal, and phalangeal bones separated from the rest of the skeleton. The corresponding bones of the cave-bear, the most abundant of the accompanying mammalia, were also found in the Liege caverns more commonly than any others, and in the same scattered condition. Occasionally, some of the long bones of mammalia were observed to have been first broken across, and then reunited or cemented again by stalagmite, as they lay on the floor of the cave.
No gnawed bones nor any coprolites were found by Schmerling. He therefore inferred that the caverns of the province of Liege had not been the dens of wild beasts, but that their organic and inorganic contents had been swept into them by streams communicating with the surface of the country. The bones, he suggested,