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Not only did the men of remote antiquity bury their dead; they laid them, as at Solutre, on the hearths near which they had lived. The dead were often buried seated or bent forward, and it is interesting to note the same custom beneath the mounds of America and the tumuli of Europe.
To this day mutilation of the person among some tribes of Indians is usual. The sacrifice of the favorite horse or horses is by no means peculiar to our Indians, for it was common among the Romans, and possibly even among the men of the Reindeer period, for at Solutre, in France, the writer saw horses' bones exhumed from the graves examined in 1873.
The Abbe Ducrost picked up 4,000 flints in one dwelling alone at Solutre, where the soil is calcareous and flint is not native, so that it must have been brought from a distance.
But, as has been already pointed out, the horse had to be tamed first. Palaeolithic man in western Europe had horse-meat in abundance. At Solutre, a little north of Lyons, a heap of food-refuse 100 yards long and 10 feet high largely consists of the bones of horses, most of them young and tender.
Such were the last resting-places alike of the men of Solutre and of those of Merovingian times. In the necropolis of Vilanova, which is supposed to date from times prior to the foundation of Rome, the tombs enclosed a chest, the walls of which consisted of slabs of sandstone set on edge and connected by a conglomerate of small stones.
They bear, in addition to the mark of their owner, notches of different shapes commemorating his exploits in battle or in hunting. At Solutre, MM. Ducrost and Arcelin noticed fragments of elephants' tusks, calcareous plaques, and some sandstone disks from the Trias, with notches and equidistant lines evidently having a similar purpose. Whistle from the Massenat Collection.
Were these too relics of funeral rites, and were the animal bones those of the horses and reindeer that had belonged to their hunter? It is impossible to say. Solutre, situated as it was on an admirable site on a hill overlooking the valley of the Seine, protected from the north winds and close to a plentiful stream, has also been a favorite resort of man.
This is by no means an isolated fact; numerous shells from the department of Champagne had been taken to tire shores of the Lesse and the Meuse. At Solutre have been found belemnites, ammonites, and Miocene shells, which were certainly never native to that district, with pieces of rock-crystal from the Alps, and beads made of a jadeite of unknown origin.
There are countless relics of apes, but none of ape-men. Even Wells says: "At a great open-air camp at Solutre, where they seem to have had annual gatherings for many centuries, it is estimated there are the bones of 100,000 horses." Would we not expect as many bones of ape-men? While Wells says the bones of 100,000 horses were found in a single locality, Dr.
The bones are mixed together in the greatest confusion, many of them show traces of having been burnt, and the flesh of the horse was evidently the favorite diet of the people of Solutre. At first man obtained by force, often aided by strategy, the animals he coveted. He bad not yet learnt to tame them and reduce them to servitude.
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