MYTHS OF CRETE & PRE-HELLENIC EUROPE

By DONALD A. MACKENZIE

THE GRESHAM PUBLISHING COMPANY LIMITED

66 CHANDOS STREET COVENT GARDEN LONDON

[1917]

CHAPTER III

Ancient Peoples of the Goddess Cult

Crete and Pallithic Man--Traces in Malta, Egypt, Palestine, and Phoenicia--Links between Pallithic and Neolithic Ages--Azilian Culture in France, Denmark, and Britain--Evidence of Geology and Folk--tales--Pallithic Types in Modern England--Coming of Neolithic Man of Mediterranean Race--The Cretan Snake--goddess, Dove--goddess, and "Lady of Wild Creatures"--The "Mother" of Crete--Identified with Rhea--Primitive Goddesses as Destroyers--Black Annis of England and Black Kali of India--The Black, Green, and Yellow Demeter (Ceres)--The Green Neith of Libya--Babylonian Labartu and Black Scoto-Irish Hag--The "Terrible" Sekhet of Egypt--Tree and Mountain Worship--Oak and Maypole and "Swain Motes"--Earth Oaths in Greece and Scotland--The Greek Ga--Cailleach and Artemis--Wind Hags--Goddess Cult and Status of Women--Process of Myth-making.

No Pallithic skulls have been yet discovered in Crete, although traces have been forthcoming of an early stage of culture not unlike the Azilian. As the island was at one time connected with the mainland, it may be that the bones of the early races and the animals associated with them lie buried in the ean Sea, which, during the Inter-glacial periods, was a broad plain watered by noble rivers and covered by dense forests. The extensive land depression along the North African coast has similarly hidden from us the secrets of prehistoric Libya.

In Malta, where ancient sites favoured by man Were liable to less disturbance by builders than in Crete, skulls of the middle Pallithic periods have been discovered. There are eleven specimens from Hal Saflieni in the Valetta museum. Some are of mixed types, but two have distinct Mousterian characteristics and especially the protruding brow ridges which distinguished the men of the Third Glacial Period.

One skull from Hagiar Kim has negroid traits and appears to link with those found in the Grimaldi cave near Mentone. As has been stated, steatopygous figures have been taken from Neolithic Maltese graves and sanctuaries, a sure indication that the Aurignacian proto-Bushmen were known to the early settlers of the Mediterranean race. Some of these figures are nude and others wear the flounced gown usually called "Cretan", and it is of interest to note here that they are associated among burial relics with perforated axe amulets of polished stone. No Cro-Magnon skulls have been discovered in Malta, but some race quite as tall must have mingled there with the early Neolithic folk. A male skeleton found at Santa Verna measures 5 feet 9 inches in length. "The man was of a noble type," writes an excavator; "he must have stood 6 feet high, his skull is massive and shapely, the jaws and teeth are even and regular, and the limbs powerful." 1 The Mediterranean Neolithic man was of slight build and medium stature.

The earliest Cretans were of the Mediterranean racial type, but among them were alien broad-heads. Ere the Neolithic folks settled on the island they came into contact, apparently, with mountaineers from the north, or descendants of Pallithic races. Steatopygous figurines have been found in Cretan Neolithic strata.

In Egypt there was no hiatus between the Pallithic and Neolithic Ages. Not only have steatopygous figurines been found in pre-Dynastic Egyptian and Nubian graves, but also flints which show that the artifacts of the later period were developed from those of the earlier. A reference to the "Smiting of the Troglodytes" on the Palermo stone of the First Dynasty may refer to descendants of the Pallithic cave-dwellers.

Palestine, the high road from Egypt into eastern Europe, has yielded numerous relics of the early stages of culture. Chellean and Acheulian flints "have been picked up on the maritime plain, in yet greater numbers on the plateau south of Jerusalem, and in considerable quantities in the region to the south of Amman, east of Jordan. Some have also been discovered far to the south, in the region of Petra." Professor Macalister, from whom we quote, notes that "Pallithic man in Palestine missed, however, the higher developments attained by his brother in France". Mousterian cave-settlements in Phoenicia have yielded characteristic flints and bone instruments, including needles. Dr. Max Blanckenhorn has assigned the date 10,000 B.C. to the earliest Neolithic settlement in this region. Sherds of pottery have been discovered in the Phnician cave of Harajel "side by side with the bones of extinct fauna, especially the woolly rhinoceros". In the natural Gezer caves of a later age finds have been made of "rude pottery, ornamented with coarse moulding or roughly painted red lines; flint flakes, knives and scrapers; millstones; rounded stone pebbles, that could be used for a variety of purposes-hearth stones; heating stones; missiles; polishers.", and "an amulet or two of bone or slate, perforated for suspension". 2

In France the most remarkable link between the Pallithic and later ages is formed by the Cro-Magnon racial type which first appeared in the Dordogne valley in the Aurignacian Period, before the Fourth Glacial Epoch. The "most curious and significant trait" of these people is that they have long heads and broad faces: that is, they have skulls with Mediterranean characteristics and faces which resemble those of the broad-headed Armenoids of the mountains. Summarizing the evidence of Dr. Collignon regarding the present-day inhabitants of the Dordogne valley, Professor Ripley says: "The people we have described above agree in physical characteristics with but one other type of men known to anthropologists. This is the celebrated Cro-Magnon race, long ago identified by archlogists as having inhabited the south-west of Europe in prehistoric times." Varieties of the type have occurred owing to the proximity of other races, but it is still common and easily detected. Individuals with the Cro-Magnon skull and "disharmonic face" are also found among present-day Berbers. 3 Skeletons of Cro-Magnon man of the Pallithic Period have been found as far north as Belgium. Dr. Schliz finds traces at the present time of Cro-Magnon man throughout western Europe, and believes that even the Neanderthal-Spy (Mousterian) type has also left a slight but recognizable impress. 4 The high average stature and weight of the Scottish people, which has long puzzled ethnologists, may be due to a strong Pallithic intermixture in early Neolithic times. The evidence obtained from the Glasgow graveyard, referred to in the Introduction, is suggestive in this connection.

Interesting evidence has been forthcoming at Mas d'Azil, in France, of the transition period between the late Pallithic and early Neolithic culture. This stage of culture is called Azilian. It was of long continuance. Artifacts called "Azilian" found in Scotland may have been separated by a considerable period of time from those discovered at Mas d'Azil. Cro-Magnon and Magdalenian men lived through and survived the Fourth Glacial Epoch. Then during the subsequent period of minor oscillations of climate the reindeer and other animals of the chase migrated northwards. These were followed, it would appear, by the huntsmen, a proportion of whom, however, remained behind and adopted new habits of life. As the Cro-Magnon folks of the Dordogne valley had domesticated animals, they no doubt found the struggle for existence in the homeland less arduous than their contemporaries, the small men of Magdalenian culture, who were hunters and fishermen and naught else.

Subsequent to the Fourth Glacial Period there was a re-elevation of land, and the Magdalenian wanderers were able to walk over the bed of the English Channel. The reindeer entered the British Isles also and survived in Scotland until the Middle Ages. A deer-horn implement, carved with a scene of the chase, which was picked up on the slopes of Ben Wyvis, was shown to the writer shortly after it was discovered. It lay for several years in the vestibule of a Dingwall hotel, but unfortunately has gone amissing. It appears to have been a relic of Pallithic culture of the late period which must be assigned to it in northern Highlands. The carving had Magdalenian characteristics.

Professor James Geikie shows that after the Fourth Glacial Epoch genial conditions prevailed in Scotland. This is the period of the great forests, relics of which are embedded in peat mosses. He terms it "Lower Forestian". A cold period followed and glaciers once again descended from the mountains, and some of these were not melted before they touched the sea. The forests decayed and the peat formed above the great trees which perished as each succeeding winter grew colder and each succeeding summer shorter and wetter. Meanwhile the land sunk and the sea washed round the 45 to 50 feet beaches. Another Inter-glacial Period followed, during which the forests again flourished. It constitutes Geikie's "Upper Forestian" Epoch. The last, or sixth, Glacial Period followed, with its small and local glaciers, during which the land sunk again, and the later peat beds covered great fallen trees. Thereafter the present Age was inaugurated by the raising of the land to more or less its present level with a gradual improvement of the climate.

Traces of man in the Azillan stage of culture have been found in Scotland. 5 The MacArthur cave, which overlooks Oban, was inhabited when the sea was 30 feet above its present level, and the Highland troglodytes--the earliest visitors--who were hunters and fishermen, left behind bone and horn implements, including the Azilian harpoon invented during the Magdalenian stage of culture of the Fourth Glacial Epoch in southern France. At Stirling harpoons of the same type were utilized at a period when whales spouted not far from the castle rock. Of late an interesting cave-dwelling, excavated at Rosemarkie in the Black Isle, has yielded a variety of bone and other implements, and human remains. A large fire-place, with upright smoke-blackened stones and surrounded by a cobbled floor, was laid bare. The cave is situated about 15 feet above the present sea-level.

Associated with these caves and other early settlements, chiefly on the ridges of the old coast-lines, are heaps of shells. These have been found as far north as Caithness. 6

Those early settlers, of the "river-bed" race, are believed to be of the same mixed stock, surviving from Pallithic times, as the famous "beach-combers" of the Danish "kitchen middens". When the earliest Mediterranean racial pioneers of the Neolithic Age entered these islands, they met and mingled with the troglodytes who are referred to in Gaelic folk-tales. 7

"It may quite well be", says Professor James Geikie, that Neolithic man appeared in southern Europe before Pallithic man had vanished from the Pyrenean region, and the two races may possibly have here come into contact." Most archlogists have abandoned the old hiatus theory. Dr. Robert Munro argues, after reviewing the latest evidence, that in Europe there was "no break in the continuity of human occupation from late Pallithic to Neolithic times", and accepts Dr. Keith's view that "Pallithic blood is as rife in the British people of today as in those of the European continent". 8 Dr. Keith finds everywhere in England numerous representatives of the "river-bed" Pallithic folks.

The Neolithic folks, who came into contact with the remnants of the Pallithic races in various parts of Europe, were representatives of the widespread Mediterranean or Brown Race. They were men of medium stature, with long heads and high but narrow foreheads, refined faces, dark eyes and hair, and slim bodies. Their brunette complexions suggest that their area of characterization was on the North African coast. Some ethnologists incline to the view that the homeland of this stock was Somaliland, the Punt of the Egyptian records, which, like Arabia, favoured the production of a larger population than it was capable of sustaining permanently. In Egypt they adopted the agricultural mode of life long before the dawn of history. Periodic folk-waves, drifting westward and east, entered Europe across the Straits of Gibraltar and through Palestine and Asia Minor by the coast-line route. In the process of time they overspread southern, central, and western Europe, and entered the British Isles. Probably they crossed over to Ireland from Scotland. Their burial customs indicate that their religious beliefs were well developed prior to the period of "folk-wandering". The Neolithic graves in Europe and Africa are constructed on similar lines, and the great majority of the skeletons they contain are remarkable for their uniformity of type. "So striking", writes Professor Elliot Smith, "is the family likeness between the early Neolithic peoples of the British Isles and the Mediterranean and the bulk of the population, both ancient and modern, of Egypt and East Africa, that the description of the bones of an Early Briton of that remote epoch might apply in all essential details to an inhabitant of Somaliland." 9

It is not necessary to assume that they waged a war of extermination against the Pallithic huntsmen and fishermen of Europe, so as to account for their ultimate superiority of numbers. Their pastoral and agricultural mode of life made it possible for them to live in larger communities and prosper in smaller areas than the Pallithic huntsman, whose activities had necessarily to extend over wide stretches of country. At any rate, they never overcame the Dordogne valley men of Cro-Magnon type. It is possible that in districts in western Europe, as well as in the British Isles, the Neolithic and late Pallithic peoples formed mixed communities.

THE SNAKE GODDESS OF CRETE

From the painting by John Duncan, A.R.S.A.

Dr. Robert Munro suggests that the latter became the servants and "clodhoppers" of the agriculturists.

The Neolithic, like the late Pallithic peoples, were goddess-worshippers. They believed that the "Great Mother" had given origin to the world, the gods, the demons, and the races of mankind. In the various countries in which early Neolithic civilization was developed traces still survive of this early belief, and it will be found that the conception of the "Great Mother" is as varied as were the degrees of culture attained by the separated communities of common stock. Primitive ideas appear to have persisted longer in isolated districts where ethnic disturbances were least frequent and habits of life less liable to undergo change.

In Crete there were three outstanding forms of the mother-goddess-the snake-goddess, the dove-goddess, and the "lady of wild creatures". These may have been different forms of an original deity, or representative of a group composed of mother and daughters. As in Egypt and Babylonia, it is found that the one goddess tends to absorb the attributes of the other. It is possible that the Mother was supposed to manifest herself in different forms, at different seasons, and in different districts, and that one of the results of local ritualistic development was to emphasize a particular form of the original deity. But there can be no doubt that the conception of the Mother was an essential part of the Cretan faith.

The great goddess was depicted wearing a flounced gown suspended from her slim waist, round which a girdle is clasped (Chapter VI). The upper part of the body is bare, and she has enormous breasts. Sometimes she stands on a mountain top, guarded by two great lions, and sometimes she is seated beside trees or plants. In addition to the lions, her wild animals include the wild goat, the horned sheep, the bull, the red deer, the snake, and the dove; and among the symbols associated with her are the horns of the bull, the double axe, the sacred pillar, the moon crescent, and a staff or wand. She was apparently a goddess of death, battle, fertility, and the chase. Offerings were made to her in a mountain-cave she was supposed to inhabit.

It must be recognized at the outset that this ancient deity, like others of her kind, was not necessarily an attractive personality. Our conception of her must not be based solely on Greek sculpture, for instance. She is believed to be identical with Rhea, the mother of Vesta, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus, and that deity was depicted by Phidias as a benign mother of great dignity and tenderness and beauty. The original mother was worshipped and propitiated because she was feared. She was the Fate who measured the lives of men, who sent disasters as well as blessings, and was associated with lions and snakes as well as doves and deer. Withal, she was a voluptuous wanton. Like the Babylonian Ishtar, who was the lover of Gilgamish in one hour and his unrelenting enemy in the next, she was fickle and changeable as the wind and the seasons. She gloried with callous heart in her power to destroy, and was untouched by tender emotions for mankind, when--

Looking over wasted lands,
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands,
Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships and praying hands.

Greek mythology, in which the beliefs of various ethnic elements were fused, and savage traditions were ultimately transformed by philosophic speculations, survives to us mainly as the product of a cultured Age. But the poets and artists did not divest it wholly of its primitive traits. it is now generally recognized that the savagery of Cronus is not mere symbolism, or the wrath of Artemis, who required the sacrifice of a beautiful maiden, simply a myth based on natural phenomena and not a reflection of "old unhappy far-off things"--a reminiscence of primitive rites performed to propitiate a bloodthirsty deity.

In those parts of ancient Europe in which ancient rites were perpetuated till a comparatively late period the worship of pagan deities was a gloomy memory. The Irish Cromm Cruaich put prostrated hosts under "deadly disgrace" before his golden image--

To him without glory
They would kill their piteous, wretched offspring,
With much wailing and peril,
To pour their blood around Cromm Cruaich.

Milk and corn
They would ask from him speedily
In return for one-third of their healthy issue:
Great was the horror and the scare of him. 10

The mother-goddess of ancient Europe was similarly remembered as a devourer of children. She survives in English folk-lore as a fierce demon. In Leicestershire she is Black Annis, who is associated with the Easter "hare hunt", and has a "cat Anna" form. The earliest reference to her appears in the following extract from an eighteenth-century title-deed: "All that close or parcel of land commonly called or known by the name 'Black Anny's Bower Close'."

It must not be assumed, however, that Black Annis was a comparatively recent importation. She appears to be of as great antiquity as the customs associated with her name. It is impossible to limit the age of these and other customs and beliefs which survive to the present day, not only in rural districts, but even in cities and among the cultured classes, after so many centuries of Christian teaching. If they have persisted so long, in spite of the combined influences of Church, printing-press, and school, like rank weeds among flowers, for how long a period, it may be asked, did they flourish before they were condemned and shown to be unworthy of civilized communities? There can be little doubt that some have been inherited from the earliest settlers in these islands, who brought from the Continent in one of the Inter-glacial Epochs, and again in the Late Stone Age, the prototypes of the charms like the lucky pigs which now dangle from watch-chains and the mascots that figure on motor-cars and aeroplanes as they once figured on coracles, and boats hollowed from trunks of trees.

It is not to be marvelled at that the ancient goddess should be remembered in Leicester district. The city's name is fragrant with ancient memories. It was called after Llyr, the British sea-god, 11 who became the King Lear of the legend on which one of Shakespeare's great dramas was based. "He (King Lear) it was", wrote Geoffrey of Monmouth in the twelfth century, "that builded the city on the River Soar, that in the British is called Kaerleir, but in the Saxon Leicester (Leirchester)." 12

Black Annis Bower was a cave upon the Dane Hills, 13 which, during the past century, became filled up with earth. Over the cave grew an oak-tree, in the branches of which the bag was wont to conceal herself so that she might pounce out unawares and seize human victims, especially children. A local poet has immortalized the hag and her cave:

An oak, the pride of all the mossy dell,
Spreads its broad arms above the stony cell;
And many a bush, with hostile thorns arrayed,
Forbids the secret cavern to invade.

Here Black Annis "held her solitary reign, the dread and wonder of the neighbouring plain". Shepherds attributed to her the loss of lambs, and mothers their loss of children. According to a local writer, the children of a past generation "who went to run on Dane Hills were assured that Black Anna lay in wait there to snatch them away to her 'bower'."

"Oft the gaunt maid the frantic mother cursed",

sang the poet, who has left the following interesting description of the hag:--

'T is said the soul of mortal man recoiled
To view Black Annis' eye, so fierce and wild.
Vast talons, foul with human flesh, there grew
In place of hands, and features livid blue
Glar'd in her visage; whilst the obscene waist
Warm skins of human victims close embraced. 14

She appears to be identical with the "Yellow Muilearteach" of Gaelic legend:

Her face was blue black of the lustre of coal,
And her bone-tufted tooth was like red rust.
In her head was one deep pool-like eye
Swifter than a star in a winter sky. 15

Another description of her runs:

The name of the dauntless spectre
Was the bald-red, white-maned Muilearteach.
Her face was dark-grey of the hue of coals,
The teeth of her jaw were slanting red;
There was one flabby eye in her head
That quicker moved than lure pursuing mackerel.
Her head bristled dark and grey,
Like scrubwood before hoar-frost.

But the Scoto-Irish hag did not wear "warm skins of human victims".

Oscar caught
The embroidered skirt that was round her body;
They took the apple from the wretch.

She had also a "girdle" like Aphrodite. 16 In India there is a ferocious goddess, who resembles Annis of Leicester. This is Black Kali. She is usually depicted dancing the "dance of fertility", like the Aurignacian and Bushman deities. Modern artists have given her normal eyes, but have retained also the primitive forehead eye. She wears a necklace of human or giant heads, and from her girdle dangle the hands and skins of victims. It would appear that Kali, whose body was smeared with the sacrificial blood, was a form of the earth-goddess; her harvest form was Jagadgauri, the yellow woman; while as the love and fertility deity she was the beautiful Lakshmi or Sri, she was Durga as the goddess of war. 17 The Greek goddess Demeter was black at Phigalia (Chapter VIII), but the ancient black statue of her was only a memory in the days of Pausanias. No doubt the rites associated with her worship were abandoned when "old times had gone and manners changed". Still the memory of Black Demeter survived as the mother of Persephone, the young corn-goddess. The "Green Demeter" was the green corn, and the "yellow Demeter" the ripened harvest grain. As the Roman Ceres her name is perpetuated in cereals--the gifts of the goddess. 18

The Libyan goddess Neith was depicted with a green face. Her symbols included the "shuttle" or thunderbolt, the bow and arrows of deities of fertility, lightning, rain, and war. In Babylonia, where the demoniac forms of gods and goddesses were perpetuated in metrical charms and incantations, the "Labartu" (Sumerian "Dimme") was a female demon. She resembled the English Annis and the Scoto-Irish Muilearteach. This primitive goddess haunted mountain and marsh, and devoured stray children who were not protected against her by wearing magical charms attached to neck-cords. The Egyptian Sekhet-Hathor was similarly a destroyer. In her primitive lion-headed Sekhet form, crowned with the solar disk and urs serpent, she was sometimes depicted with a naked dagger grasped tightly in her right hand, and sometimes with a magic wand. Isis-Hathor, who personified all the goddesses of Egypt in late times, is referred to significantly in a Philae text as follows:--

Kindly is she as Bast (the cat-goddess)
Terrible is she as Sekhet. 19

The association of the Cretan mother-goddess with trees and mountains will be dealt with more intimately in a later chapter. Here, however, it is of interest to note that the demoniac English deity, Black Annis, was a tree as well as a cave deity. Offerings of children were probably made to her in the archlogical Hunting Period, as they were to the Irish Cromm Cruaich in the Agricultural Period in return for milk and corn. The oak in Leicestershire was reverenced as the habitation of the goddess. In Charnwood Forest the "copt oak" was a "trysting-place in olden time". It was long "a place of assembly. . . . Swain motes (courts for the common people) were held for regulation of rights and claims on the forest." In the Highlands Gaelic-speaking people who attend a court at the present day refer to it as a "mote". Trials were conducted at these assemblies, and it is not surprising to find that near the Leicestershire "swain's hill" is situated "Hangman's Stone". "Royal Oak Day" (May 29th) is the "May Day" for Leicestershire children.

In early times the maypole, usually made of oak, was the symbol of authority and justice, as well as of fertility. "The column of May", suggests one writer on the subject, "was the great standard of justice in the Ey Commons, or Fields of May. Here it was that the people, if they saw cause, deposed or punished their governors, their barons, or their kings." When the maypole was brought from the forest the youths and maidens joined in singing songs, of which the chorus was: "We have brought the Summer home". 20 Scrimmages took place between youths who were attired to represent winter and spring. A seventeenth-century writer says that "a company of yonkers, on May-day morning, before day, went into the country to fetch home a maypole with drumme and trumpet, whereat the neighbouring inhabitants were affrighted, supposing some enemies had landed to sack them. The pole being thus brought home and set up, they began to drink healths about it till they could not stand so steady as the pole did." 21 The maypole customs and the "motes" held under oak-trees are evidently relics of tree-worship. Probably the human representative of the Cretan goddess, seated below her tree, dispensed justice and ushered in the season of fertility and growth, like the May Queen.

In Scotland., where there are "motes" also, it is found that certain "church lands" were anciently associated with magical and religious ceremonies. 22 Twisting paths leading to wells and hillocks remain as "rights of way". It is of interest to find, too, that the habit of swearing by the earth was also prevalent. In a Gaelic story it is related that when the heroes formed a compact to avenge insults and injuries suffered by one of their number they "lifted a little piece of earth and shouted 'Vengeance'". They thus effected a ceremonial connection with the Earth Mother. In Greece "the most current formula of the public oath, when a treaty was to be ratified or an alliance cemented, was", writes Dr. Farnell, "the invocation of Zeus, Helios, and Ge (the Earth Mother). "And doubtless", he adds, "one of the earliest forms of oath taken was some kind of primitive communion, whereby both parties place themselves in sacred contact with some divine force." 23

Ge or Gaia was a vague and ancient deity who was sometimes identified with the "earth snake". She was the mother of Titans, Cyclopes, and Hecatoncheires. Similarly the Scoto-Irish hag known as "Cailleach" (old wife), "Grey Eyebrows", "Muilearteach"., was mother of the giants (Fomorians) who had monstrous forms, and against whom gods and mortals waged war. A black lamb was offered to Gaia. The Cailleach was apparently offered the "black boar", or the "green boar", slain by the heroes of folk-tales.

As the Earth Mother was sworn by, she must have been conceived of as an active force, capable of assuming concrete form. Rhea, Demeter, Artemis, and other deities were probably forms or manifestations of her at various seasons.

The Cailleach, with blue-black face and roaring mouth, appears to have been recognized in her Muilearteach form as the spirit of tempest on sea and land. As the mountain-spirit of the Hunting Period she moved restlessly among the hills, followed by herds of wild animals, including deer, goats, and swine. In her right hand she grasped a "hammer", or "magic wand", like the gigantic Cretan goddess on her lion-supported mountain-peak. When standing-stones were struck with the "magic wand", they were immediately transformed into giant warriors, fully armed and ready for battle. After throwing away this, her symbol of fertility and authority, the Cailleach herself was transformed into a standing-stone "looking over the sea". She was also associated with rivers and lakes and overflowing wells.

This hag, who, according to one folk-tale, "existed from the long eternity of the world", was not only the mother of giants but also the ancestress of the various tribes of mankind. In Ireland she appears to have been the earlier Danu, the mother of the Danann gods and people, and Anu, the mountain-hag associated with "the Paps of Anu". As the "Old Woman of Beare" she had "seven periods of youth one after another", writes Professor Kuno Meyer, "so that every man who had lived with her came to die of old age, and her grandsons and great-grandsons were tribes and races". 24 In several stories she appears before a hero as a repulsive hag and suddenly transforms herself into a beautiful girl.

As the patroness of wild animals the Cailleach resembles Artemis, whom Browning, like certain of the Greek poets, idealized and consequently robbed of her primitive savage character.

I shed in Hell o'er my pale people peace,
On Earth, I, caring for the creatures, guard
Each pregnant yellow wolf and foxbitch sleek
And every feathered mother's callow brood,
And all that love green haunts and loneliness.

Artemis occasionally appeared in the form of a hare, a hind, or a bear. As a goddess of the chase she might be depicted seated on the back of a stag or standing with bow in hand beside a hill surmounted by a boar's head. Human sacrifices appear to have been offered to her, and myths were formed in the process of time to justify the substitution of wild animals for girls and lads. Spartan boys were flogged and sprinkled with blood at rites connected with Artemis worship. As a wind-goddess she demanded the sacrifice of Agamemnon's daughter when the fleet assembled at Aulis in Botia ready to sail against Troy. The Scoto-Irish Cailleach had similarly control over the winds, as had also the hags who "brewed breezes" on Jochgrimm mountain in Tyrol. Artemis haunted the mountains Erymanthus and Taygetus and the banks of the River Eurotas in Laconia. It was in Crete that she was fabled to have slain the giant Orion because he loved her.

It will be seen that the idea of the mother-goddess prevailed in ancient times from India to Ireland and throughout Egypt. Although she was closely associated with the Mediterranean or Brown Race, which included the Neolithic Europeans, the proto-Egyptians, the Sumerians, Southern Persians, and Aryo-Indians, she was also a conspicuous figure in the Late Pallithic Period. Long before the ideal types of her had evolved in Greece, she was a terror-inspiring conception among the common people. In isolated areas, which were untouched by Greek idealism, her memory was perpetuated as a repulsive and blood-thirsty hag who terrorized the people and demanded annual dues of human and animal victims. She was associated with the worship of stones, trees, wild animals, wells and rivers, mountains and mounds. As an earth-goddess she was a deity of death, destruction, fertility, and growth; hunters preyed on her flocks and had accordingly to propitiate her; pastoralists made offerings to her to secure the supply of grass, and the agricultural peoples recognized her as the mother of the corn-spirits, male and female. She reflected the culture of various stages of human development, and she assumed the character of the various communities who developed the ritual of her worship; she also mirrored the natural phenomena of the different countries in which she received recognition. Yet she was never wholly divested of her primitive traits. As in Aurignacian times, she remained as the Mother who was the ancestress of all and the source of good and evil, or luck and misfortune. In Crete she was well developed before the earliest island settlers began to carve her images on gems and seals or depict them in frescoes. She symbolized the island and its social life and organization. The Cretans, according to Plutarch, spoke of Crete as their motherland and not their fatherland.

As the mother-goddess in her various forms reflected the habits of life and the degree of civilization attained by her worshippers, it is possible also that the prominence given to the female principle in religious life caused women to be held in higher esteem than among the peoples of the god cult. Mr. J. R. Hall, in his Ancient History in the Far East, referring to the social status of the women in Crete, says that "it is certain they must have lived on a footing of greater equality with men than in any other ancient civilization. . . . We see in the frescoes of Knossos conclusive indications of an open and free association of men and women, corresponding to our idea of 'Society', at the Minoan Court, unparalleled till our own day." Car remarked on the matriarchal conditions which prevailed in certain parts of ancient Britain. Among the Scottish Picts descent was reckoned by the female line, as in the royal families of Egypt and southern European states. It is possible that in Aurignacian times the women of the tribes similarly exercised considerable influence. They appear to have been prominent in the performance of magical and religious rites. Indeed, it is the opinion of some anthropologists, like Bachofen, that women exercised a greater influence than men in developing primitive religious ideas. "Wherever", he comments "gyncracy meets us, the mystery of religion is bound up with it, and lends to motherhood an incorporation of some divinity." 25 The evidence gleaned from certain folktales suggests that women trained young huntsmen and warriors to perform feats of strength and skill. When the Irish Cuchullin visited Alban, to complete his military education, he was tested by an Amazon. Brynhild, of Iceland fame, like Brunhild of the Nibelungenlied, overcame many warriors ere she was won.

The comparative evidence dealt with in this chapter emphasizes the fact that in dealing with the Cretan and pre-Hellenic deities account must be taken of the primitive modes of thought which are traceable n the accumulated myths and legends attached to them. In the process of myth-making many influences were at work. Historical happenings had to be dealt with as well as the experiences of everyday life in a new environment. The growth of civilization changed the character of religious beliefs also. When old savage practices were abandoned, myths were framed to justify innovations, as when, for instance, the innocent girl Iphigenia was to be sacrificed to Artemis but was substituted by a stag. It was related that the goddess carried her off in a cloud and decided that she should become a priestess. The practice of offering up strangers in sacrifice obtained probably when a community began to abhor the idea of offering up one of its own members.

In the next chapter it will be shown how the study of ancient myths has led to the discovery of those traces of ancient civilization in Crete and the ean which has made it possible to reconstruct two thousand years of pre-Hellenic civilization.

Footnotes

1 Malta and the Mediterranean Race, R. N. Bradley, pp. 72 et seq.
2 History of Civilization in Palestine, pp. 9 et seq.
3 The Races of Europe, pp. 172 et seq.
4 Archiv f Anthropologie, Band 351 St. 239 et seq.
5 For earlier traces of Pallithic man see The Stone Ages in North Britain and Ireland, by Rev. Frederick Smith (London & Glasgow, 1909). Dr. A. H. Keane calls the author the "Boucher de Perthes of Scotland".
6 Huxley & Laing's Prehistoric Remains in Caithness (London, 1886).
7 A cave-dweller in a Fingalian story is called Ciofach Mac a' Ghoill ("Ciofach, son of the stranger"). Another version refers to him as Ciuthach (pronounce "Kew'-ach"). Dealing with the legend of the Ciuthach, Professor W. J. Watson considers that he was a hero "of a different race from the Gael" (Celtic Review, January, 1914).
8 Prehistoric Britain, p. 234. (London, 1914 ).
9 The Ancient Egyptians, p. 58.
10 Celtic Myth and Legend, p. 39.
11 Celtic Myth and Legend, pp. 252 et seq.
12 "Kaer" and "Chester" signify cities. London was "Kaer-lud", called after the god Lud, whose name lingers also in "Ludgate".
13 It is suggested that "Dane" is a corruption of the Celtic "Danann".
14 County Folk-lore (Leicestershire and Rutland), by C. J. Billson, Vol. I., London, 1895 (Folk-lore Society's Publications).
15 Campbell's West Highland Tales, Vol. III, p. 138.
16 Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition, Vol. IV, pp. 142 et seq. (London, 1891).
17 Indian Myth and Legend, pp. xl. and 149-50.
18 Golden Bough ("Spirits of the Corn and the Wild"), Vol. I, pp. 35 et seq. (third edition).
19 Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, A. Wiedemann, p. 138 (London, 1897).
20 Quoted in County Folk-lore, Vol. I, pp. 29 et seq.
21 Brand's Antiquities, Vol. I, pp. 238 et seq.
22 According to Caesar, the Druids of Gaul held sessions at consecrated places of meeting which, from other sources, we learn were called nemeta. In old Irish the term appears as nemed, and in modern Scottish Gaelic it is neimhidh, which signifies "church land". The English rendering is Navity or Nevity.--Professor W. J. Watson in Celtic Review (1915), Vol. X, pp. 263 et seq.
23 Cults of the Greek States, Vol. III, p. 5.
24 Ancient Irish Poetry, p. 88.
25 Das Mutterrecht, p. xv.

MYTHS OF CRETE & PRE-HELLENIC EUROPE

By DONALD A. MACKENZIE

THE GRESHAM PUBLISHING COMPANY LIMITED

66 CHANDOS STREET COVENT GARDEN LONDON

[1917]

CHAPTER I

Primitive Europeans of the Glacial and Inter-glacial Periods

Geological and Mythical Ages of the World--Myths as Products of Environment--The Deluge and Great Winter Legends--New World Cataclysms--Doctrines of Decadence and Evolution in World's Ages Myths--Sages of the "Wandering Jew" Type--The Monsters of Geology and Mythology--Story of the Pleistocene Age--First Glacial Period--Mauer (Heidelberg) Man--Second Glacial Period--The Age of Chellean Culture--The Piltdown Skull--Acheulian Culture Stage--Third Glacial Period and Mousterian Man--Cro--Magnon Race and Grimaldi "Bushmen"--Aurignacian Cave Pictures and Beliefs--Solutrean Culture--Fourth Glacial Period and Magdalenian Man--The Problem of Eoliths--Approximate Duration of Pallithic Age.

THE system which obtains among modern scientists, of dividing the history of the earth into geological epochs and the pre-history of man into cultural periods, was anticipated by the priestly theorists of ancient civilizations, who established the doctrine of the mythical Ages of the World. These early teachers were:, no doubt, as greatly concerned about justifying their own pretensions and the tenets of their cults as in gratifying the growing thirst for knowledge among the educated classes. When they undertook to reveal the process of creation and throw light on the origin and purpose of mankind, they exalted local deities in opposition to those regarded supreme at rival centres of culture and political influence. Many rival systems of a national religion were thus perpetuated. But the various city priesthoods of a particular country found it necessary to deal also with problems of common concern. Among other things, they had to account for the various races of whom they had knowledge and to give divine sanction to existing social conditions; nor could they overlook the accidental discoveries which were occasionally made of the relics of elder and unknown peoples and the bones of extinct animals.

These mythology-makers, of course, possessed but meager knowledge of their country's past, and were accordingly compelled to draw freely upon their imaginations; but they should not be regarded on that account as merely dreamers of dreams and inventors of miraculous stories. Indications are forthcoming which show that they were not wholly devoid of the scientific spirit. They were close observers of natural phenomena, and sometimes made deductions which, considering the narrowness of areas available to them for investigation, were not unworthy of thinking men. It seemed perfectly reasonable to the Babylonian and Egyptian scientists, who saw land growing from accumulations of river-borne silt, and desert wastes rendered cultivable by irrigation, to conclude, for instance, that water was the primary element and the source of all that existed.

This doctrine, which holds that the Universe is derived from one particular form of matter, has been called "Materialistic Monism". Ultimately, when mind was exalted above matter, the belief obtained that the inanimate forces of nature were subject to the control of the supreme Mind, which was the First Cause. This later doctrine is known as "Idealistic Monism". It was embraced by various cults in Babylonia, India, and Egypt. In the latter country, for instance, the great god of Memphis was addressed:

Ptah, the great, is the mind and tongue of the gods. . . .
It (the mind) is the one which bringeth forth every successful issue. . . .
It was the fashioner of all gods.
At a time when every divine word
Came into existence by the thought of the mind
And the command of the tongue. 1

In Egypt and Babylonia, where inundations of river valleys were of periodic occurrence, and where, at rare intervals, floods of excessive volume caused great destruction and loss of life, and even brought about political changes, it was concluded that the old Ages were ended and new Ages inaugurated by world-devastating deluges.

The deductions of the early scientists in northern Europe were similarly drawn from the evidence afforded by environment, and similarly influenced by persistent modes of thought. They saw shoals formed and beaches overlaid by sand washed up by the sea from, as it appeared, some sand-creating source, and conceived that on the floor of ocean there stood a great "World Mill" propelled by giantesses, which ground the bodies of primeval world-giants into earth meal. "'Tis said", a saga author set forth, "that far out, off yonder ness, the Nine Maids of the Island mill stir amain the host-cruel skerry-quern--they who in ages past ground Hamlet's meal. The good chieftain furrows the hull's lair with his ship's beaked prow." 2

In the Elder Edda the god of the mill, who appears to be identical with Frey and the original Hamlet, is called Mundlefore, "the handle-mover":

The Mover of the Handle is father of Moon
And the father eke of Sun.

This "World Mill" caused the heavens to revolve round a fixed point marked by the polar star, which was called veraldar nagli, the "world-spike".

Believing that sun and moon rose from the ocean, and that therefore light came from darkness, they concluded that winter preceded summer at the beginning.

Untold winters ere Earth was fashioned
Roaring Bergelm was born;
His father was Thrudgelm of Mighty Voice,
Loud-sounding Ymer his grandsire. 3

In the north it was observed also that growth was promoted when the ice melted, and the teachers reasoned that the first being, Ymer, came into existence when sparks from the southland, or "poison drops from the sea", fell upon the primeval icebergs, and caused drops of trickling water to fertilize the clay.

From Stormy-billow sprang poison drops
Which waxed into Jotun form.

The Babylonians, on the other hand, who were familiar with the part played by reeds in accumulating mud and binding river-banks, taught that-

Marduk (Merodach) laid a reed upon the face of the waters.
He formed dust and poured it out beside the reed. . . .
He formed mankind. 4

It may be, too, that the ancient teachers, who framed creation myths and expounded local forms of the doctrine of the World's Ages, mingled at times with their pseudoscientific deductions and brilliant imaginings dim and confused racial traditions of early migrations and varied experiences in different areas of settlement. Some of these traditions may have had origin before the dawn of the Neolithic or Late Stone Age. As will be shown, certain customs, which are familiar to students of ancient civilizations, were prevalent among primitive peoples in the vast Pallithic or Early Stone Age. With these customs may have survived in localities legends associated with or based upon them. The possibility remains, therefore, that in Persian mythology there are memories not only of an area of settlement among the mountains where severe winters were as greatly dreaded as exceptional floods in river valleys, but even of one of the last recurring phases of the Ice Age. A poetic narrative relates that the patriarch Yima, who afterwards became Lord of the Dead, constructed a shelter to afford safe protection for mankind and their domesticated animals during the "evil winter", with its "hard, killing frost". He had been forwarned of this approaching world-disaster by the supreme god Ahura Mazda (Ormuzd). Perhaps the "shelter" was a southern valley to which the proto-Persians were compelled to migrate on account of the growing severity of successive winters and the lowering of the perpetual snow-line around mountain-fringed plateaus they were accustomed to inhabit. It is related in the Avesta, one of the Persian sacred books, that "before the winter the land had meadows. . . . The water was wont to flow over it and the snow to melt." A similar prolonged winter is foretold in Icelandic mythology. According to the Prose Edda, which is a patchwork of fragmentary legends of uncertain origin and antiquity, it will precede the destruction of the universe by the giants of frost and fire (lightning). "In the first place will come the winter, called Fimbul winter, during which snow will fall from the four corners of the world; the frosts will be very severe, the wind piercing, the weather tempestuous, and the sun impart no gladness." 5

From the Voluspa poem of the Elder Edda we gather details of--

A Sword Age, Axe Age--shields are cloven,
A Wind Age, Wolf Age, ere the world sinks.

Then, after describing a period of universal destruction, the soothsayer proceeds:

I see uprising a second time
Earth from the ocean, green anew:
The waters fall, on high the eagle
Flies o'er the fell and catches fish. 6

Various accounts of universal cataclysms come from the New World. Representative of these are the legends of the Arawaks of North Brazil regarding periods of flood, storm, and darkness, and those of the Mexicans, which deal with the destruction of early races by deluges caused by several succeeding suns perishing from lack of sustenance.

The most highly developed doctrinal systems of World Ages which have survived from antiquity are found, however, in the Mythologies of India, Greece, and Ireland. There is more than one account in Aryo-Indian literature of the periodic Ages called Yugas. These are embraced in longer Ages of sufficient duration to satisfy the requirements of modern geologists. Four Yugas extend over a period of "divine years" equal to 4,320,000 years of mortals, and a thousand of the combined Yugas comprise a "Day of Brahma", the individualized "World Soul". The Yugas begin with the Krita or Perfect Age, which is White, and decline from that to the Treta, which is Red, and the Dwara, which is Yellow, to Kali Yuga, "the Black or Iron Age".

Hesiod, in his Work and Days, begins the Greek system with the perfect Golden Age, which is followed by the Silver and Bronze Ages, and the two Ages of Heroes and Iron, which may have been local subdivisions of the fourth Age, represented in India by Kali Yuga.

Both in India and Greece, man it will be noted, was believed to have relapsed from a primitive state of perfection. The system found in Ireland, which was probably imported from Gaul with the doctrine of transmigration of souls and the custom of widow-burning or slaying, follows, on the other hand, an evolutionary process. The first Irish Age, that of Partholon and his race, is an Age of folly. It is followed by Nemed's Age, which was distinguished for cruelty, and the Age of the Fir Bolgs, in which the power of evil was supreme. Then comes the Danann Age of benevolent deities and heroes, who are the reputed "ancestors of the men of learning in Erin". The last Age is the Milesian, and during it St. Patrick reached Ireland and preached Christianity.

This ancient doctrine of the World's Ages, which may be traced in Egypt and Babylonia, where certain gods lived for periods upon earth as human. kings, was adapted to suit the needs of different cults in different areas of localization. In India the four great castes were each connected with a Yuga: the Brahmans had origin in the White Age, the Kshatriyas (military aristocrats) in the Red Age, the Vaisyas (traders and agriculturists) in the Yellow Age, and the Sudras (Dravidians and pre-Dravidians) in the Black Age. In Greece an Age was devoted to the Trojan heroes, and in Ireland the Fir Bolgs, Dananns, and Milesians were identified with existing racial types whom St. Patrick found there.

One of the versions of the Indian legend of Mythical Ages is related by the deathless sage Markandeya, who lived through all the Yugas, and was protected during the Deluge by the child-god Narayana. The Irish account was put into the mouth of Tuan MacCarell. He had been a contemporary of Partholon, and afterwards existed for periods as a stag, a boar, a vulture or eagle, and a salmon. In the end his salmon form was devoured by the wife of King Carell, with the result that he was reborn as her son. Another sage of this class is the famous Mus of the Icelandic Bragda Mus saga, who renewed his youth periodically by casting his skin. He also figures in the Charlemagne romances.

If the ancient teachers, who professed to have received revelations from sages like the "Wandering Jew", had been acquainted with the scientific data which is now available, their narratives of past Ages would have described greater changes than ever they conceived of. Nor would these be lacking either in picturesqueness or imaginative appeal. The priestly sages would have no cause to lament with the poet:

Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof and texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.

Even greater and more ferocious monsters than were dreamt of in their philosophy might have figured in their wonder-compelling and fearsome legends. Instead of the composite demons of Egypt and Babylonia, the Eur-Asian dragons, the flying serpents of the Nile valley, and the great snakes of ocean, they could have told of the gigantic reptiles of the Triassic and Jurassic systems, the great mammals of the Tertiary Period, and those contemporaries of man in the Pleistocene Age, the hairy mammoths, bulky with fat and fur, the fierce woolly rhinoceroses, the huge cave-bears, and the immense sabre-toothed tigers. No ancient legend of fabled monsters surpasses the modern scientist's account of extinct gigantic fauna. Nor can the creation-myths on Egyptian papyri, Babylonian bricks, or Indian palm-leaf books approach in grandness and charm the dramatic story of the four great geological Ages of the World.

The author of the Tuan MacCarell legend would in our day begin his narrative with the dawn of the Pleistocene Age, which endured for at least 620,000 years, and was yet much shorter than any of the four Tertiary Ages--the Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, or Pliocene.

In the post-Pliocene, or early Pleistocene period, Tuan, let it be supposed, awakens from magic sleep in Europe. He gazes with wonder on forests of strange and mighty trees. Monstrous wild animals come and go. Several resemble elephants, and the greatest of these is the long-tusked mastodon of colossal bulk. Hippopotami snort in the rivers, on the banks of which crouch, basking in sunshine, ponderous Dinotheriums, resembling sea-cows, with downward-curving tusks and short trunks. Across verdurous plains gallop herds of little horses with divided hoofs. The dreaded sabre-toothed tiger crouches in the jungle ready to pounce upon its prey.

Tuan, who alternately sleeps for long centuries and wanders about the earth like the legendary Jew, continues his narrative. "When next I awoke", he tells, "I found that Europe had been completely transformed. No great forests flourished on its central plains; bare stretches of frozen ground extended far and near. From northern Germany to the Pole, valleys and rivers were shrouded by ice and seas were frozen over. Great mountain-peaks towered grimly above curving glaciers like rocky islands in a foam-white ocean. Icebergs drifted down the Atlantic past the coast of Spain. This was the First Glacial Period.

"When next I awoke the ice was vanishing, the rivers surged from the melting glaciers) many valleys were flooded, and vegetation flourished. In the years that followed I saw the forests extending northward from the Mediterranean coast, and the ocean ebbing gradually farther and farther away, owing to the widespread elevation of land, until great islands became uplands in vast plains, and continents linked with continents around the world. I must describe Europe as it appeared to me before I next fell asleep. The Mediterranean Sea was divided into two great lakes when Italy became attached to a triangular plain which jutted out from the north African coast. The Strait of Gibraltar was closed, and a broad valley united Spain with Morocco. Corsica and Sardinia formed a promontory when the Gulf of Genoa vanished, and the Balearic Isles were mountains on a finger of land attached to western Spain. The Baltic Sea became a shrunken inland lake, the English Channel and the North Sea had disappeared. The British Isles were then joined to the Continent, and the plains which enclosed them extended far westward beyond Land's End, the western coast-line of Ireland and that of the Scottish Hebrides, and stretched north-eastward beyond the Shetland Isles to the coast of Norway. A "land-bridge", which shrank to a narrow neck 100 miles north-west of Cape Wrath, united Scotland and Iceland) and narrowed again ere it met the extended coast of Greenland. The Rivers Elbe and Rhine drained the broad valley which had been the North Sea, and were united about 150 miles eastward from the Aberdeenshire coast after the Rhine had received the waters of the Forth and Tay. The Conon poured through the valley which had been the Moray Firth, and, sweeping eastward past the Orkney and Shetland Islands, entered the sea 20 miles westward from the mouth of the Elbe. The Seine cut through the valley of the English Channel, and the Severn united, 100 miles westward from Land's End, with a river flowing from a long narrow loch which divided Ireland from Scotland, and extended southward to Carnsore Point in Wexford.

"Over the Eur-African land-bridges came many of the great animals which I saw during the first period of the Pleistocene Age. Attracted by the genial temperature, even the rhinoceros came north, and with the sabre-toothed tiger prowled on the upland plains of England, where I saw also the giant sloth, the hippopotamus, the mastodon, the triple-toed horse, great tortoises, the giant fallow deer, the well-armoured glyptodon, 7 as big as an ox, and numerous great snakes and nimble apes.

"For a long period I searched in vain for traces of mankind, but at length I discovered a tribe of most primitive savages at Mauer, on the banks of the River Neckar, then very broad and deep, near where Heidelberg now stands. They hunted down the horse and the elk, and dreaded greatly the rhinoceros and the cave-lion. Their homes were among the branches of high trees. In aspect they were extremely repulsive: they had low, sharply-retreating foreheads, squat noses, big bulging mouths, and chinless jaws. 8 I never saw these savages except in this First Interglacial Period.

"When next I awoke from the slumber of centuries I found that Europe had once more been transformed. The Mediterranean Sea had snapped the Italian land-bridge and flowed through the Dardanelles to the Black Sea; a blue strait separated Gibraltar from Morocco. The British Islands were entirely isolated. Roaring tides swept up and down the English Channel, and the broad North Sea, overswept by foam-churning tempest, was dotted over by innumerable icebergs. Each succeeding winter the ocean encroached farther and farther inland, burying in deep sand-banks the great trunks of forest trees, creeping up river valleys and forming stony beaches where wild flowers had bloomed and birds had carolled and built their nests. At length the advancing billows shaped out a rough shore-line round the island coasts over 40 feet above their present level. In time the land was re-elevated and the sea shrank back again.

"The snow-line of Scottish mountains crept down gradually lower and lower, and glaciers appeared once more. Ultimately vast fields of ice jutted across the North Sea, and the Baltic remained frozen during the months of summer. Icebergs were stranded on Dogger Bank and drifted down the English Channel in early summer through veils of white fog into the Bay of Biscay and round Cape Finisterre.

"Ere I went to sleep again the ice-fields had obliterated Holland and Belgium and crept up the Elbe valley almost to the plain of Bohemia, where the climate was sub-arctic and tundra conditions prevailed as in northern Siberia at the present time. Scotland, Ireland, and Wales were ice-locked, and England was covered over as far south as Essex on the east and Gloucester on the west, except where the battling glaciers left bare patches in the middle districts and in the East Riding of Yorkshire. This was the Second Glacial Period. When it had reached its maximum, I wandered southward through France, then a dreary waste, and saw herds of musk-oxen and reindeer, lumbering woolly rhinoceroses, and fat mammoths with great recurving tusks and shaggy red manes.

"I had sought shelter from a blinding dust-storm in a cave on a bare hill-side, and slept there. When next I awoke and crept forth, I found myself in a deep shady forest. It was a fragrant morning of bright sunshine, and although it seemed to be midsummer, the sweet spring season had not yet spent itself. The rivers at this, the dawn of the Second Inter-glacial Period, ran broad and deep, swollen by the melting glaciers, but they shrank gradually as weeks of heat and dryness went past. Wide shallow lakes grew smaller each succeeding summer until they vanished entirely, and their dark beds grew verdant with long grasses. When I went northward I found that the British Isles were once again a part of the Continent. The African hippopotamus snorted in the Thames, the rhinoceros lumbered along the plains of the English Channel, and through the forests of the North Sea valley herds of elephants ranged as far north as the banks of the Forth. I saw many tribes of human beings. I first met them at Chelles, on the banks of the Seine, 8 miles eastward from the site of Paris. The Chellean men were of higher type than the grotesque tree-dwellers of Mauer. Their dark skins bespoke their southern origin, and they resembled certain tribes of Australian savages. They were entirely devoid of clothing. The men carried long staves, which were sharpened to points, with which they speared fish and hunted the little wild horse. I saw them chipping flint and shaping "hand-axes", 9 which they used for a variety of purposes-cutting branches from trees, skinning and dividing animals, and weapons. They also made small flint scrapers and small flint daggers with rough curved hefts.

"I saw these men hunting in England and in Central and Western Europe. They crossed over to Africa by the Italian land-bridge, round the rock of Gibraltar, and along the Palestinian coast., and they were numerous in Persia and India. Ere I fell asleep I was transported round the world, and saw thousands of human beings following the edible animals over the northern land-bridge from Asia to Canada, and down the western sea-coast to South America. Then I slumbered again.

"Long centuries went past as I slept. When next I awoke I found that Europe had once again become changed. The sea was washing round the shores of the British Isles, and the Italian land-bridge to Africa had been severed. Crete was no longer a part of the main land, and the green mountains which had towered on the well-watered valley connecting Greece with Asia Minor were islands in the ean Sea. The temperature had suffered decline. Summer was shorter and winter longer and of growing severity. During the warm weather the southern animals wandered through France, and, when the snow began to fall, the mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, and the reindeer came down from the north in search of food. I saw new types of humanity which had arrived from Asia. They mingled with Chellean men in some localities, and in others fought with them for possession of hunting-grounds. Many tribes were isolated in Britain when the land was lowered and the sea advanced. There were Asiatics in Sussex, and I saw some camping on the banks of the Ouse at Piltdown, near Uckfield. 10 During the winter these people sought shelter in caves.

"The change of climate had intensified the struggle for existence) and sharpened the wits of men. At St. Acheul, at Amiens, in the Somme valley, I found the flint-workers displaying increased skill and producing several new implements which the altered conditions of life had made necessary. Acheulian man had achieved a considerable degree of progress in other directions. Those tribes which remained in western and central Europe, owing to the winter season found it necessary to provide themselves with skin clothing, but the great majority migrated to genial climes, and these continued their old habits of life. I fell asleep at the close of this the Second Interglacial Period, which was longer and more genial than any of the others.

"The Third Glacial Epoch was well advanced when next I set forth a wanderer through the valleys of Europe. It was less widespread than the second. Two-thirds of England and about a fourth of Ireland were clear of ice, nor was the Zuyder Zee frozen during summer. The site of Berlin, however, was well within the glacial area, as was also that of Warsaw. The Alpine snow-line had crept down over 3000 feet. Yet although Europe resembled in some parts Greenland and in others North Siberia in the present Age, I saw numerous tribes of human beings. They were of small stature but muscular and active. Their heads were narrow but of great size, and their faces, although not devoid of intelligence, were exceedingly rugged; their big dark eyes were overshadowed by enormous brow ridges, they had broad flattened noses, projecting mouths, and chinless jaws. 11 They made their homes in caves, and in these they lit fires, round which they sat to chip their flints and fashion their skin garments.

"I will describe what I saw when I sought shelter with a tribe of these people at Le Moustier, in the valley of Dordogne, in south-western France. The River Ve then flowed go feet higher than in modern times. I entered a cave on a damp and chilly summer day. Haunches of venison were being roasted on a fire-place constructed of upright stones, and near it several workmen were busily engaged chipping flints. They constructed a greater variety of implements than the men of the Chellean and Acheulean Periods, and showed greater skill in economizing their material: flakes were removed at a single blow and utilized for smaller artifacts, and when an implement was given form it was carefully dressed with minute chipping until it became an artistic product, exceedingly pleasing to the eye. Men took delight in their work and rivalled one another to gain the praises of their fellows. The tailors cut the dried skins with their sharp hand-axes. Then they squatted with crossed legs to sew the pieces together into not unshapely garments. They made holes, through which to thrust their dried thongs, with little flint awls. In the evening a company of hunters returned from the chase, dragging on a skin sledge the carcass of a musk-ox; and when they had feasted heavily, I heard them tell of battles with the cave-bear, of escapes from the cave-lion and the dreaded woolly rhinoceros, of the slaying

EXAMPLES OF PALLITHIC ART

The objects include: handles of knives and daggers carved in ivory and bone, line drawings of wild animals, faces of men or demons, of animal-headed demon or deity with arms uplifted (compare Egyptian "Ka" attitude of adoration), of wild horses on perforated "arrow straightener", of men stalking a bison, of seal, cow, reindeer, cave bear, and perforated amulets of a great mammoth, and of how they guarded their food-supplies against the ravages of prowling hyenas, gluttons, and arctic foxes. Meanwhile the women busily engaged themselves at the mouth of the cave cutting up the body of the musk-ox and cleaning the skin with flint scrapers. Ere night fell, the chief announced that on the morrow they would go eastward to hunt reindeer. I gathered that these people migrated northward during the summer, and returned again, on the approach of cold weather, to their southern caves. Not infrequently they had to fight with other tribes who took possession of their winter homes.

"I went to sleep during this period, and when next I awoke I found that the Third Inter-glacial Period had dawned. The glaciers melted and again there were great floods in the valleys, and the ice retreated from the lowlands of Scotland. The summers in Central Europe were exceedingly pleasant, but never so warm as during the Chellean Age, and dust-storms were of frequent occurrence. Forests were once again flourishing, and I saw in the midst of them many southern animals which were migrating farther and farther northward. During winter the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros came as far south as Prussia. Mousterian man was able to pursue the hunt high among the mountains, where he found caves in which to shelter himself from wild animals by night. He returned to the valleys when the blizzards of winter drove southward the fierce and numerous beasts of prey he dreaded most.

"I saw new types of mankind. In the Dordogne valley were tribes of slender-limbed human giants who were fearless warriors and mighty huntsmen. Some were 6 feet 6 inches in height. But it was not only in stature that they contrasted sharply with the vanishing

Mousterians, who were rarely higher than 5 feet 3 inches. They had big long heads and broad faces, high foreheads, deep-set brown eyes, prominent cheek-bones, sharply curved lips, and well-formed chins. They resembled modern Europeans more closely than any human beings I had yet met with. Their faces, tanned by wind and sun, were alert and keen, and, although rugged, were greatly softened when their ready smile laid bare their white gleaming teeth. I observed that the young men showed great respect for their elders. It was of common occurrence to see many gathered round a cave entrance listening to the counsel of some white-haired sage. An old man, who had achieved widespread renown as an explorer and leader of men, lived in a cave at Cro-Magnon, and was often approached to settle disputes and give advice regarding great undertakings; he was also skilled as a healer of wounds and a curer of disease. These men had greater regard for their dead than obtained among their Mousterian predecessors. I once saw them laying to rest a slain warrior in his family burial-grotto at Aurignac. He was clad in his skin robe. His headdress was adorned with a string of sea-shells and round his neck was a collar of the perforated teeth of a reindeer, the skeleton of the salmon of wisdom was laid on his breast, and the whole body was sprinkled with magic pigment. A fire was lit, and the warriors danced round the grave with slow, measured steps, while a sage recited the mighty deeds performed by the dead man. Women knelt near at hand, wailing a chorus of sorrow. Beside the warrior they laid his weapons and implements as well as food which had been cooked for him and water for refreshment; then the grotto was closed up with a large slab of limestone. Aurignacian man of Cro-Magnon type was a lover of his kind. saw other tribes which had entered southern France at this period from Africa. At a Grimaldi cave near Mentone I dwelt for a space with a family of dark-skinned people with broad noses and protruding mouths. They resembled somewhat the modern Bushmen of South Africa and were similarly of short stature, but their heads were larger and their faces more intelligent. Middle-aged women had enormous development of fatty tissue; their steatopygous figures were invariably exceedingly grotesque, but were yet greatly admired. 12

"These Aurignacian peoples worshipped the mother-goddess, and there were among them clever artists who carved out of ivory and bone, limestone and steatite, female figures to represent their deity. Sometimes they depicted the slim-waisted, long-haired Cro-Magnon women, and sometimes the woolly-haired bulging forms of Grimaldi type. In those districts where the Bushmen-like people were the slaves of the tall huntsmen a steatopygous woman was sometimes selected at religious ceremonies to represent the mother-goddess.

The Aurignacian artists were wont to decorate their caverns with figures of wild animals, which they sketched in outline with pointed flints, and often coloured with crayons of red ochre or painted with pigment which they carried in bone tubes. In the deep cave of Altamira, in Spain, I saw a great picture-gallery in which various artists had exhibited their skill. One part of the vaulted roof was covered with lifelike representations of edible animals, including wild horses, deer, and boars, and elsewhere I saw artistic productions of similarly high merit. In some caves, which were constantly inhabited, were impressions of human hands. These were intended to avert the influences of the evil eye and the attacks of demons. Huntsmen left records of their experiences in summer hunting districts by inscribing symbols on cave walls, so that those who came nigh might know how they were likely to fare there. They also depicted the forms of monstrous demons that had to be propitiated.

The hunters of the Aurignacian Age were the first I saw using bows and arrows. In preparing the arrow-shafts they utilized perforated bone straighteners. 13 Their flint implements were worked with skill far surpassing that of the Mousterian Age.

"How long I slept during this period I cannot tell. When next I woke up I found that the temperature had suffered sharp decline. Cro-Magnon man still inhabited a great portion of southern France, 14 but I observed also other types which were new to me. At Solutre, Saone-et-Loire, where tall and short types gave evidence of race intermixture, I fell in with highly-skilled artisans who shaped flint lance-heads of laurel-leaf and willow-leaf shape, and accomplished delicate secondary flaking by pressure with bone implements. They also made comfortable skin clothing, which they sewed with bone needles which had perforated eyes. 15 The winters grew gradually longer and more severe, and the men of the Solutrean Age achieved rapid progress in their conflict with the elements. Huntsmen favoured the horse, but slew also the reindeer.

"The Fourth Glacial Period followed, and it was suffering decline when I next went out to explore those districts that had seen so many changes. I awoke at La Madelaine, on the right bank of the Ve, which then flowed higher

PALEOLITHIC ART: REPRESENTATIVE PAINTINGS OF BISON AND DEER, FROM THE CAVE OF ALTAMIRA, NEAR SANTANDER, SPAIN

The bison was evidently painted during summer, after it had rubbed its shaggy winter coat off the greater part of its body than at the present day.

In this district the tall men of Cro-Magnon type were less numerous than the stumpy intruders of this Magdalenian Age, who had some resemblance to the present-day Esquimaux. Half-breeds, however, were not uncommon. The little men had much more refined and intelligent faces than the Mousterians; their foreheads were large and their chins prominent, and they were clad in closely-fitting skin garments to resist the sub-arctic climate. Like the cave-dwellers of the Aurignacian Age, they were skilled artists and artisans. The Grimaldi folks had migrated southward, and ivory carvings of the mother goddess were modelled on the slim-waisted female type. Artists continued to decorate the caves with paintings of animals, and they also engraved their implements and weapons, and even stones and pieces of slate. The bison and the wild horse were often depicted, but the most favoured models were the northern animals of this cold European Age. Mammoths were growing scarce, for men had acquired skill in trapping them, and the artists engraved ivory charms with their bulky forms, and numerous were their studies of reindeer grazing on snowy plains, crouched up at bay, or panting in rapid flight to escape the dogs and arrows of the huntsmen. The Magdalenian artists also drew the snarling cave-bear, the double-horned and snouted head of the woolly rhinoceros, the antelope and the chamois, and the scampering wolf with gaping jaws. Among birds they were familiar with the goose and the swan, and, as they were accomplished fishermen, they could carve in many characteristic attitudes the graceful salmon and the keen-eyed seal. Many huntsmen had the handles of their daggers fashioned to represent the animals they were wont to stalk and slay.

"During this period flint-working declined somewhat, for the fashion became prevalent of pointing lances and arrows with ivory and bone and reindeer horn. A great inventor equipped huntsmen with a new weapon-the barbed harpoon-and another provided for it a thrower made from reindeer horn, so that it could be thrown farther and directed with surer aim. A long cord was attached to the harpoon, which was utilized to catch salmon and seals. This wonderful invention was the means of increasing greatly the food-supply. It thus rendered the struggle for existence less arduous, especially when the tribes increased in number.

"Great changes took place when the Fourth Glacial Period began to decline, and more genial conditions became prevalent. The Magdalenian huntsmen migrated farther and farther northward as the ice area shrank in dimensions, because the reindeer deserted those districts which failed to yield them in sufficient abundance the lichens upon which they fed."

In the Gaelic legend of the Irish Ages it is stated that, when Tuan ended, "the auditors thanked him. . . . They remained a whole week talking with him." But his modern narrative deals with problems which are not likely to be solved In so brief a space of time. It touches the fringes of not a few controversies which have been waged vigorously for a number of years, and are likely to be continued indefinitely. In this volume, however, which deals mainly with the intellectual life of early peoples, it is unnecessary to state in detail the various conflicting views regarding the geological periods and the earliest traces of man in Europe; but a brief summary of the results of modern research may be given, so that the general reader may be familiarized with one particular phase of the subject which is pregnant with human interest.

In Tuan's references to early man in Europe, six stages of development, or levels of culture, have been referred to.

These are:

1. The Chellean, in the Second Inter-glacial Period.
2. The Acheulian, a late phase of the Chellean.
3. The Mousterian, in the Third Glacial Period and later.
4. The Aurignacian, in the Third Inter-glacial Period and later.
5. The Solutrean, in the late Third Inter-glacial Period and later.
6. The Magdalenian, in the Fourth Glacial Period.

Some archlogists place before the Chellean, Stage 1 the Mesvinian, and 2, the Strepyan, but others regard them as earlier phases of the Chellean. A still earlier stage, called the Mafflian, with which the Galley Hill (Kent) skeleton and implements were associated, has been taken down to the Strepyan Period of Chellean man. The various stages have been subdivided into Upper, Middle, and Lower Periods.

Of late years certain scientists have sought to establish a pre-Pallithic Age called the Eolithic. They thus place the appearance of man in the geological Tertiary system, not only in the Pliocene Age, which preceded the Pleistocene, but also back through the Miocene and Oligocene Ages to the Eocene. The Tertiary stages of culture are called Reutelian, and are as follows:--

1. Eocene Age, Duan (Reutelian).
2. Oligocene Age, Fagnian (Reutelian).
3. Miocene Age, Cantalian (Reutelian).
4. Pliocene Age, Kentian (Reutelian).
5. Early Pleistocene, Thames basin (Reutelian).

Then follow the Mesvinian and Strepyan phases of early Chellean culture.

Professor James Geikie confesses he is "staggered" by the theory that man existed in the Tertiary system of Ages. "Since the Eocene Period, which must date back", he says, "several millions of years, the whole mammalian fauna has undergone modifications and changes, continuous evolution having resulted in the more or less complete transformation of numerous types, while many others have long been extinct. And yet, if we accept the eoliths as proofs of man's existence in Eocene and Oligocene times, we must admit that in this case--and in this case alone--evolution must have been at a standstill during a prodigiously extended period. For it must be understood that the eoliths of the older Tertiary formations cannot be distinguished from those met with in the Miocene, Pliocene, and even Pleistocene deposits. 16

These "eoliths" are chipped flints which were either flaked by man or by natural causes--the movements of strata settling under pressure or the action of water. The problem is a difficult one. "The unprejudiced", says Professor Duckworth, "will maintain an open mind, pending the advent of more conclusive evidence than has been adduced hitherto." 17 Professor Sollas, on the other hand, is convinced that not a trace of unquestionable evidence of man's existence has been found in strata admittedly older than the Pleistocene. 18

Estimates of the approximate duration of the Pleistocene Age vary considerably. Geikie, following Penck, gives 620,000 years as a minimum; Rutot confines it to 139,000 years, and thus reduces greatly the age of his "eoliths", while Sturge estimates that a single period of it lasted for 700,000 years. The majority of leading scientists, however, have of late inclined to favour Penck's system of dating, and to allow 400,000 years as a minimum for the Pallithic or Early Stone Age, which begins with the first stages of Chellean culture. The dawn of the Neolithic, or Late Stone Age, is dated in southern Europe and Palestine at roughly 10,000 B.C.

In the next chapter consideration will be given to those traces which survive of the religious and magical beliefs of the Pallithic peoples, and it will be shown that the evidence accumulated has an important bearing on the problems raised by Cretan and pre-Hellenic discoveries, as well as upon the study of the myths and legends of Babylonia and Egypt, and those of peoples less renowned but no less important from the point of view of the student of comparative mythology.

Footnotes

1 Breasted's History of Egypt, p. 357.
2 Translated from Amlodi Saga, by F. York Powell.
3 Bergelm and Thrudgelm, nature-giants, and Ymer, the primeval world-giant. The Elder Edda, O. Bray, pp. 471 49; and Teutonic Myth and Legend, pp. 1 et seq.
4 The Seven Tablets of Creation, L. W. King, p. 129.
5 Mallet's Northern Antiquities, p. 451.
6 The Elder Edda, O. Bray, pp. 291, 295.
7 Resembling the armadillo.
8 The jaw-bone of the earliest European was found in a Mauer sand-pit, 78 feet from the surface. Sollas holds that this primitive German belonged to none of the existing races of mankind. The jaw-bone has Simian characteristics.
9 The so-called coup-de-poing of the French archlogists; also named "bouchers", after M. Boucher de Perthes, who half a century ago identified them as primitive artifacts of human contemporaries of extinct wild animals.
10 The Piltdown skull of a broad-headed woman was discovered in 1913.
11 The Neanderthal-Spy type.
12 Two Grimaldi skulls which have been discovered have distinct negroid characteristics: the jaw protrudes sharply.
13 This implement has also been called a "sceptre"; it was more probably an "arrow straightener".
14 And is still found there, as ethnologists have demonstrated.
15 The bone needle with perforated eye is an invention of this period.
16 Antiquity of Man in Europe, p. 5 (1914.).
17 Prehistoric Man, pp. 106-21 (1912).
18 Ancient Hunters, pp. 67, 69 (1911).