The occasional discovery of human bones and
works of art in any stratum, within a few feet of
the surface, affords no certain evidence of such
remains being coeval with the matrix in which
they are deposited. The universal practice of
interring the dead, and frequent custom of
placing various instruments and utensils in the
ground with them, offer a ready explanation
of the presence of bones of men in situations
accessible for the purposes of burial.
The most remarkable and only recorded case
of human skeletons imbedded in a solid limestone
rock, is that on the shore of Guadaloupe.*
* One of these skeletons is preserved in the British Museum,
and has been described by Mr. Konig, in the Phil. Trans, for 1814,
vol. eiv. p. 101. According to General Ernouf, (Lin. Trans. 1818,
vol. xii. p. 53), the rock in which the human bones occur at
Guadaloupe, is composed of consolidated sand, and contains also
shells, of species now inhabiting the adjacent sea and land, together
with fragments of pottery, arrows, and hatchets of stone.
The greater number of the bones are dispersed. One entire
skeleton was extended in the usual position of burial; another,
which was in a softer sandstone, seemed to have been buried in
the sitting position customary among the Caribs. The bodies thus
differently interred, may have belonged to two different tribes.
General Ernouf also explains the occurrence of the scattered
bones, by reference to a tradition of a battle and massacre on
this spot, of a tribe of Gallibis by the Caribs, about the year
1710. These scattered bones of the massacred Gallibis were
probably covered, by the action of the sea, with sand, which soon
after became converted to solid stone.
On the west coast of Ireland, near Killery Harbour, a sand
bank, which is surrounded by the sea at high water, is at this
time employed by the natives as a place of interment.
IN STRATA OF RECENT FORMATION. 105
There is, however, no reason to consider these
bones to be of high antiquity, as the rock in
which they occur is of very recent formation,
and is composed of agglutinated fragments of
shells and corals which inhabit the adjacent
water. Such kind of stone is frequently formed
in a few years from sand-banks composed of
similar materials, on the shores of tropical seas.
Frequent discoveries have also been made of
human bones, and rude works of art, in natural
caverns, sometimes inclosed in stalactite, at
other times in beds of earthy materials, which
are interspersed with bones of extinct species of
quadrupeds. These cases may likewise be explained
by the common practice of mankind in
all ages, to bury their dead in such convenient
repositories. The accidental circumstance that
many caverns contained the bones of extinct
species of other animals, dispersed through the
same soil in which human bodies may, at any
subsequent period have been buried, affords no
proof of the time when these remains of men
were introduced.
Many of these caverns have been inhabited
by savage tribes, who, for convenience of occupation,
have, repeatedly disturbed portions of soil
in which their predecessors may have been
buried. Such disturbances will explain the occasional
admixture of fragments of human skeletons,
and the bones of modern quadrupeds, with