Martyrs of Science

by S. Henry Berthoud

  The oldest, having recourse to the invincible patience peculiar to savages, who take no account of time or difficulty, were piercing the bears’ teeth in order to make necklaces of them; as a preliminary, by means of extremely thin pointed flints wedged in bones and repeated blows with stones, they were scraping out and excavating the roots of the teeth, detached from the broken jaw, with minute precaution. By dint of skill and time, they ended up obtaining a hole in each tooth, which they then enlarged and rounded.

  A few young women, directed by the companion who had given them orders a short while before, with an authority respected by all, were devoting themselves to work that was even more delicate. With the aid of fragments of bone forming needles of all dimensions, polished and pointed at one end, and terminated at the other by a narrow opening through which an eye hollowed out in a narrow groove permitted the introduction of a fiber detached from the fresh tendons of an animal, they were sewing.

  Thanks to their long sojourn in a bed of grease, those fibers—like ones still fabricated in America and Africa—became a veritable thread with which hides could be stitched into garments, and various component parts assembled.

  The women were also responsible for polishing the wood of bows, arrows and spears, and of fitting flint points to the arrows and spears. The men reserved the task of fabricating the points.

  In order to understand the nature of that work more fully, it is necessary to say that flint, especially when fresh and when the action of the air has not hardened and partly decomposed it, possesses a particular and little-known property. If its plane surface is struck with a sharp blow, a fissure is produced in its depth, which is prolonged for some distance and which isolates and separates a rounded cone. Mineralogists call this phenomenon the “conoid fracture.” When the sharp blow is delivered to the edge of the flint, the fracture is merely “demi-conoid.” In accordance with this property, which is well-known to manufacturers of rifle-flints, they have discovered how prehistoric savages manufactured their scrapers, knives and spear-points, as the savages that populate America, Oceania and Africa still do.

  When splitting a flint, the warrior of the Île de la Cité began by producing two parallel and opposite faces destined to become the bases of prisms. Then they struck a sharp blow on one of those bases and detached a splinter extending from one to the other. By turning the fragment obtained symmetrically, the faces were formed one by one, resulting in a prism with several faces, which, according to its thickness, might have been eight and twenty-four faces. By striking a sharp bow between two of these faces, a fragment with three or four angles could invariably be detached. That operation continued until the nucleus became too small to be handled. On the majority of points fabricated in this fashion a curvature is observable at the extremity of the conoid fracture, because the flint normally produces slightly arched splinters.

  The women imitated this kind of work to obtain the knives and scrapers designed for the preparation of hides.

  Toward evening the hunters who had set forth in the morning returned to the cavern, bringing back wild boar, reindeer and hares. When they were all inside, the entrance to the grotto was closed with an enormous stone detached from the interior wall and roughly carved, in such a way as to seal it tightly, so as not to allow the penetration of cold draughts or wild animals. After that, the fire was revived by throwing dry wood on to it, and everyone sat down around the blaze, which provided both light and heat.

  To cook the most delicate pieces of the prey that had been brought back, a hole was dug in the ground; three stones heated in the fire were placed in it, and the feet, head or certain sections of the intestine placed in the middle. That primitive oven was closed with a forth stone heated like the other three, and it was covered with hot ashes. Half an hour later, the delicate meats reserved for the chief and the principal warriors were removed, perfectly cooked. The latter sat down at a large stone that served as their table, and each of the cavern’s residents, following their example, subsequently took part in the feast.

  When everyone was seated, work recommenced. The women sowed, playing their bone needles and tendon thread; the men repaired or maintained their stone weapons and fashioned reindeer antlers into the hilts of daggers or hammers; they sometimes decorated them with carvings that were not lacking in a certain skill. Most of the time they took advantage of accidents and curves in the antlers to provide faces that they sculpted into the form of an animal.

  Those figures are still easily recognizable today, after so many centuries, when archaeologists are fortunate enough to discover a few of them in caves occupied by the primitive inhabitants of Europe. One can see wild boar, red deer and, most commonly, reindeer. They do not have the stiff and immobile attitudes of Egyptian art. Depicted in motion, the legs of the reindeer are bent beneath them and their heads extended, as if they were gathering impetus; the boar are rushing forward, with their fur bristling and their formidable tusks extended; the red deer and the horses, by contrast, are grazing placidly.

  Other carvings seem to be dedicated to religious symbols. The sun expands in a crown of rays, the moon is rounded and strange faces grimace from it. Sometimes there are whimsical designs, sometimes traced in relief, sometimes hollowed out, representing pearls, knots, stars, squares and diamonds.

  The tines of red deer antlers served for the fabrication of a multitude of small objects, both utilitarian and ornamental, such as barbed arrow-tips and punches for piercing holes in pelts through which the women’s crude bone needles could introduce threads.

  Gradually, the incandescence of the fire died down and the cavern became darker. Then the old man stood up, and everyone imitated him silently. He made a gesture. Immediately, the women went to lie down next to their children on beds of moss and dry leaves; the men wrapped themselves up in their cloaks, and silence and sleep soon reigned in the cavern, where a profound obscurity did not take long to fall.

  The next morning everyone woke up at the sound of the chief’s voice and got up. The women hastened to relight the fire, and placed what remained of the half-consumed embers on masses of wood that crackled and caught fire. A long, thick column of smoke emerged through the fissure in the vault, and the warriors picked up their weapons. With great efforts, the stone sealing the entrance was rolled back inside the cave, and everyone went out through the narrow gap that led outside.

  While most of the hunters headed for the forest that covered the opposite bank of the Seine, five or six others struck the ice on the river with large pointed stones fashioned for that purpose, opening a vast hole therein into which they threw pieces of thinly-sliced fresh meat.

  When they supposed that the fish were biting—as fishermen still say today—they kept a close watch on their arrival, and set about harpooning the imprudent individuals that came up to the opening to eat and breathe.

  The harpoons that they used consisted of a long shaft fitted with a barbed piece of antler or bone, and they rarely missed their thrust. Almost invariably, the fisherman, having struck his prey swiftly with a sure thrust, brought it back no less swiftly by an abrupt movement and threw it on to the ice, palpitating, where it was finished off by striking it with a stone hammer.

  Women who were stationed close by placed the produce of the fishing in their wicker baskets, which they handed to their companions for transportation to the cavern.

  Their abundant harvest of fish terminated, the fishermen came back to the bank and, following the edge of the forest, carefully examined the soil making it up. They did not take long to happen upon a vein of clay, whose icy surface they broke up and from which they succeeded in extracting a mass of compact and malleable matter, which they loaded onto their shoulders and brought back to the communal habitation. They kneaded that earth for a long time and, without any other instrument than their hands, formed primitive bowls, like those of which fragments are sometimes found, especially at Meudon.

  Once the bowls were fashioned, they covered them with hot ashes, place
d over the ashes a mass of incandescent embers, and then set about other work, leaving fire and time the care of baking their pottery.

  At dusk, shortly before the return of the hunters, they gently cleared away the embers and ashes covering the bowls, and examined them scrupulously. Some, having failed to resist the action of the fire, were found to be either broken or furrowed with cracks that rendered their use impossible; others, by contrast, had acquired a real hardness and solidity, and were reliable, with a few precautions. They were filled with water, gradually exposed to the action of the fire, and eventually surrounded with flaming wood. When that proof was terminated, they were handed over to the women, who made use of them for the fish caught that morning.

  Such was, for a few months and until spring, the existence of those savages who had moved slowly, step by step, through Gaul and the fringes of the Dordogne all the way to the banks of the Seine.

  What motive had forced them to make that long and difficult emigration during the most rigorous season of the year?

  Alas, it was a scourge that still desolates Europe today, and was already desolating that epoch so distant from our 19th century: war.

  The tribe had occupied comfortable caves on the fringes of the Dordogne, laboriously fitted out by its efforts. Prey of every species was abundant in the nearby forests, which supplied them with wood in abundance, and the lakes and rivers were full of fish.

  One day, a horde, doubtless chased from its own possessions by a more numerous horde, and in search of a favorable place in which to settle, found what they desired in the caves of Eyzies. Others were living there, but the unfortunates had too few warriors to resist a powerful enemy. The newcomers immediately took possession of the caves, massacring the inhabitants, and the few who remained of those unfortunates were obliged to go into exile and search for some deserted region far away, in order to live there in peace, sheltered from further spoliations.

  Always searching, and finding redoubtable enemies everywhere on their path, or tribes too strong for them to attack and drive them out in their turn, the band, composed of scarcely a hundred individuals, eventually stopped at the island, where they finally found a cave that was large, solid and easy to defend. No human foot had ever left an imprint on the sand of that shore, known only to wild animals. What more favorable spot could the emigrants hope to discover?

  So, when winter disappeared and spring began to melt the ice of the river, to bring back a more clement temperature and to open buds on the trees, the exiles set about taking the measures necessary to settle securely and permanently in their new homeland.

  Before proceeding with that endeavor, however, the old man, accompanied by two warriors, explored the surrounding region to make sure that there was no spot more favorable for the establishment of the tribe of which he was the chief. He reached, not without peril and fatigue, the heights of Montmartre, which he had perceived across the marshes of the Île de la Cité. From the top of the hill he could survey the entire region: the woods of Saint-Cloud, Ville-d’Avray and Marly. Those places, then nameless, formed an island separated from another by the strait of Versailles, the valley of Sèvres and the valley of the park of Versailles.

  Another island comprised Bellevue, Meudon, Verrières and Chaville, detached from the continent by the strait that followed the valley of the Bièvre and the hills of Jouy. Finally, there was another group of islands, now disappeared, covered with forests—for there was nothing to be seen anywhere but woods and water.

  In spite of the proximity of two other islands—the Île Louviers and the Île Saint-Louis—the old man said to his companions: “The place where we’re living seems to me to be the best-situated and the safest. We can’t, therefore, establish ourselves in better conditions and more securely. To work, then! And may the Sun, our god, protect us.”

  When the old man had expressed that opinion—or, rather made that decision, approved by the other two leaders—he went back with them to the Île de la Cité, through the immense marshes that extended in those days between the banks of the Seine and the heights of Montmartre.

  Sometimes it was necessary for them to climb into a small boat made from oak barks sewn together with strips of hide, like those the indigenes of Canada fabricate today, and which the chief’s companions took turns to carry on their robust shoulders. Sometimes, leaning on long staffs with which they tested the terrain, it was necessary for them to walk over terrain that undulated beneath their feet and covered profound abysses, like some that still existed in the Pas-de-Calais near Clairmarais at the beginning of the 19th century, which recent works of canalization and drainage have caused to disappear. Reptiles, myriads of toads, frogs, salamanders and newts pullulated everywhere in the long grass; reeds, willows, poplars and tree-trunks felled by time and lying half-rotted in the water formed a perilous labyrinth and exhaled a noxious odor.

  Finally, they succeeded in getting back to the Île de la Cité. The old man announced to the tribe, whose members had grouped around him as soon as he returned, that, the following day, they would begin to construct habitations on the banks of the island, and found a village that would permit each family to have its own dwelling and cease living communally in the cave.

  Indeed, at daybreak the next day, all the men went into the forest and felled a large number of medium-sized trees, sometimes with blows of flint axes, sometimes having recourse to fire to consume the trunks at their base and oblige them to topple.

  Most frequently, they made gashes in the trunks between twenty and twenty-five centimeters long, and threw a lasso into the branches, which they attached firmly by powerful ropes of twisted hide. Then five of six men, combining their strength, pulled repeatedly on the rope, and caused the tree to fall at their feet.

  Then, with the aid of levers, similarly made from long branches, they placed the trees on round logs stripped of their bark and fashioned into rollers, and thus brought them, laboriously, to the banks of the island. There they charred one of the extremities, which they placed in a blazing fire, and afterwards, with the aid of hide ropes and the association of numerous arms, they embedded that extremity in the mud, raised the pole upright and drove them in vertically with blows of flint hammers.

  After that operation, to consolidate the piles, they heaped around them large stones collected from the bank and threw sand and clay on top of the masses. Many of those barbaric constructions can still be found in the lakes of Neuchâtel and Morat, where they have been given the names of steinbergs and tenevières, which mean “mounds inundated by water.”

  A month later, four hundred of these beams, at a distance of seven or eight meters from the island, without communicating with it other than by wooden drawbridges, formed a kind of fortification of piles on which cabins were constructed.

  It was more trunks and branches that formed these squat houses, dressed with a daub of clay mixed with sliced vegetables. They were roofed with long reeds fixed by pickets and cords of bark-fiber previously macerated in water. Finally, an opening was contrived in the middle of each roof, beneath which a fireplace was set, consisting of five large stones, from which swirls of smoke were not long delayed in emerging.

  After that, the life of the tribe established on the Île de la Cité took on a character of tranquility and order quite different from the one they had led in the cave. The men hunted all day, it is true, as before, but the women, during their absence, applied themselves to giving their dwellings a more cheerful appearance, and creating all possible wellbeing there. They ornamented the walls every day with tree-branches, renewed as soon as they faded; they covered the earthen floor with reeds and fashioned clay vessels, which they baked in the fire. They did not forget their clothing and all possible means of making themselves more beautiful in the eyes of their spouses. Sometimes they collected petrified marine sponges on the shore and took advantage of those little stones’ natural holes to pass plant-fiber thread or animal tendons through them to make bracelets. Sometimes, they detached little pearl
s from blocks of chalk that were naturally pierced with holes, which today’s naturalists call “globular tragos,”85 and fashioned necklaces.

  Every morning they bathed their children and themselves in the river, and swam gaily in the midst of all those hardy little savages, who competed in skill in the water. When they returned to the bank, they smoothed their long blonde hair with combs made from carved sea-shells and put on short dressed, such are still sometimes found in certain Swiss peat-bogs, among weapons made of flint and bone. The dresses in question left the arms free and naked, and a part of the breast, and only came down to the knees.

  Having completed their toilette, they devoted themselves to household chores, preparing their spouses’ meals, and in the evening, when the latter returned, plunged into the Seine again.

  One still finds that passion for bathing and that quest for neatness in a large number of populations of America and Oceania, and it is common to almost all savage races. Untidiness is a relatively modern daughter of civilization and its sisters, poverty and carelessness.

  Sometimes, too, like the same savage peoples, with the aid of a needle made of the bone of a hare, terminated by a fine flint point securely embedded in the bone, and the antler of a fallow deer hollowed out in the form of a pot, they were able to mix a red dye and make use of it to inscribe bizarre tattoos on their foreheads, breast or arms. Monsieur Meillet86 has found a similar item in the caves of Chaffaud; the deer-antler was still half-full of very pure and finely-powdered iron oxide. It is well-known that the ancient Scots, the Picts, did not disdain to paint their faces by analogous means.