and doubtless worn as amulets. Tiedemann exhumed, in caverns of
Belgium, human hones, mixed with those of hears, elephants, hyenas,
horses, wild hoars, and ruminants. These human relics were precisely
like those they were associated with, in respect to the changes
either had undergone in color, hardness, degree of decomposition, and
other marks of fossilization. In the caves of Trance and Belgium,
we often find, in the deepest and most inaccessible places, far remote
from any communication with the surface, human bones buried in
the clayey deposit, and cemented fast to the sides and walls. On
every side, we may see crania imbedded in clay, and often accompanied
by the teeth or bones of hyenas. In breccias containing the
bones of rodents and the teeth of horses and rhinoceroses, we also
meet with human fossils.
There are many other cases on record, of human remains being
found associated with animal fossils, both in England and on the Continent.
As well at Kitely as at Brixham, such associations have been
noticed ; and there can be little doubt that human fossils exist in
caverns and formations beneath the present level of the sea: e.g. at
Plymouth and other places, where remains of elephants have been
washed up by the surf.
In the caverns of Bizé, in France, human bones and shreds of pottery
turned up in the red clay, mixed with remains of extinct animals
; and on the Rhine, they have been found in connection with
skulls of gigantic hisons, uri, and other extinct species. The cave
of Gailenreuth, in Franconia, is situated in a perpendicular rock, its
mouth being upwards of 300 feet above the .level of the river. Those
of Zahnloch and Kiihloch are similarly elevated; and the latter is
supposed to have contained the vestiges of at least 2500 cavern-bears;
while the cave of Copfingen, in the Suabian Alps,' is not less than
2500 feet above the sea. These caves contained collections of human
and of animal remains; while their elevation places them above the
reach of any partial inundations. Ossuaries in the vale of Xostritz,
Upper Saxony, are more interesting, because they have been more
carefully studied. They are situated in the gypsum quarries; and
the undulating country about them is too elevated to permit of their
deposits having been influenced, in the least, by those inundations
which are made to answer for such a multitude of sins. Mo partial
inundation could possibly have disturbed them since the present geological.
arrangement; nor were there external openings or indications
of any kind revealing the existence of an extensive cave within.
The soil is the usual ossiferous loam, and the stalagmite rests upon it
as in other caverns. Beneath these deposits, human and animal fossils
have been discovered, at a depth of twenty feet. These deposits
were first described by Baron von Schlotheim, who concludes his
account with these remarks:
“ It f evident that the human hones could not have been buried here, nor have fallen
into fissures during battles in ancient times. They are few, completely isolated, and detached.
Nor could they have been thus mutilated and lodged by any other accidental cause
in more modern times, inasmuch as they are always found with the other animal remains,
under the same relations — not constituting connected skeletons, but gathered m various
groups.”
Besides those of man at different periods of life, from infancy to
mature age, bones of the rhinoceros, of a'great feline, of hyena, horse,
ox, deer, hare, and ra,bbit, were found; to which owl, elephant, elk,
and reindeer relics have since been added. Specimens of the human
fossils are in possession of the Baron, of the Prince of Reuss, Dr.
Schotte, and other gentlemen residing near the spot; and Mr. Fair-
holme, who visited Saxony expressly to satisfy himself of the facts by
a careful examination of the locality, brought specimens to England,
which he presented to the British Museum. I t is worthy of being
noted here, that the above bones were not all entombed m caverns or
fissures, but that some human fossils were dug out of the clay, at a
depth of eighteen feet, and eight feet below the remains of a rhinoceros'.*
Enough has thus been said upon fossil Man disinterred
accidentally in that Old World which, in natural phenomena, f a c tu ally
younger than the “ Mew.”
Crossing from Europe to our own continent, we behold, m the
Academy of Sciences at Philadelphia, a fossilized human fragment,
surpassingly curious, if of disputed antiquity.
“ Dr Dickeson presented another relic of yet greater interest: viz., the fossil Os innomi-
naturn of the hnman subject, taken from the above-mentioned stratum of blue clay [near
Natchez, Mississippi], and about two feet below the skeletons of the megalonyx and other
genera of extinct quadrupeds; . . . that of a young man of sixteen years of age,” t • •;
“ Ten of these interesting relics [of the fossil /¡orse], consisting of five superior and inferior
molars, Dr. Dickeson relates, were obtained, together with remains of the megalonyx,
ursus, the os hominis innominatum fissile, &c., in the vicinity of Natchez, Mississippi,, from a
stratum of tenacious blue clay, underlying a diluvial deposit.” J
Aware of the critical objections to this fossil put forward by Lyell,
we neither affirm nor deny its antiquity by mentioning that Morton,
and other palaeontologists, did not consider these demurrers conclusive
: nor is much geological erudition requisite to comprehend that,
under the atmospheric conditions in which a horse and a hear could
inhale the breath of life, a human mammifer might equally well have
respired it with them. • ________
f. Hamilton Smith: Natural History of the Human Species. Edinburgh, 1848; p. 93-107.
+ Proceed. Acad. Nat. Sciences, Philad.; October, 1846, p. 10/.
I Leidy: On the Fossil Horse of America, op. cit., Sept. 1847, p. 265. Vide, also, proceedings
Acad. Nat. Sciences; Dec. 1847, p. 328.