HKB
Bones were found in the same mass belonging to three new species of deer, the brown bear (Ursus arctoideus), and the wild bull (Bos urus), formerly a native of Germany.[1051]
In the same parts of France, M. de Christol has found in caverns in a tertiary limestone at Pondres and Souvignargues, two leagues north of Lunel-viel, in the department of Herault, human bones and pottery confusedly mixed with remains of the rhinoceros, bear, hyaena, and other terrestrial mammifers. They were imbedded in alluvial mud, of the solidity of calcareous tufa, and containing some flint pebbles and fragments of the limestone of the country. Beneath this mixed accumulation, which sometimes attained a thickness of thirteen feet, is the original floor of the cavern, about a foot thick, covered with bones and the dung of animals (album graecum), in a sandy and tufaceous cement.
The human bones in these caverns of Pondres and Souvignargues were found, upon a careful analysis, to have parted with their animal matter to as great a degree as those of the hyaena which accompany them, and are equally brittle, and adhere as strongly to the tongue.
In order to compare the degree of alteration of these bones with those known to be of high antiquity, M. Marcel de Serres and M. Ballard, chemists of Montpelier, procured some from a Gaulish sarcophagus, in the plain of Lunel, supposed to have been buried for fourteen or fifteen centuries at least. In these the cellular tissue was empty, but they were more solid than fresh bones. They did not adhere to the tongue in the same manner as those of the caverns of Bize and Pondres, yet they had lost at least three fourths of their original animal matter.
The superior solidity of the Gaulish bones to those in a fresh skeleton is a fact in perfect accordance with the observations made by Dr. Mantell on bones taken from a Saxon tumulus near Lewes.
M. Tessier has also described a cavern near Mialet, in the department of Gard, where the remains of the bear and other animals were mingled confusedly with human bones, coarse pottery, teeth pierced for amulets, pointed fragments of bone, bracelets of bronze, and a Roman urn. Part of this deposit reached to the roof of the cavity, and adhered firmly to it. The author suggests that the exterior portion of the grotto may at one period have been a den of bears, and that afterwards the aboriginal inhabitants of the country took possession of it either for a dwelling or a burial-place, and left there the coarse pottery, amulets, and pointed pieces of bone. At a third period the Romans may have used the cavern as a place of sepulture or concealment, and to them may have belonged the urn and bracelets of metal. If we then suppose the course of the neighboring river to be impeded by some temporary cause, a flood would be occasioned, which, rushing into the open grotto, may have washed all the remains into the interior caves and tunnels, heaping the whole confusedly together.[1052]
In the controversy which has arisen on this subject, MM. Marcel de Serres, De Christol, Tournal, and others, have contended, that the phenomena of this and other caverns in the south of France prove that the fossil rhinoceros, hyaena, bear, and several other lost species, were once contemporaneous inhabitants of the country, together with man; while M. Desnoyers has supported the opposite opinion. The flint hatchets and arrow-heads, he says, and the pointed bones and coarse pottery of many French and English caves, agree precisely in character with those found in the tumuli, and under the dolmens (rude altars of unhewn stone) of the primitive inhabitants of Gaul, Britain, and Germany. The human bones, therefore, in the caves which are associated with such fabricated objects, must belong not to antediluvian periods, but to a people in the same stage of civilization as those who constructed the tumuli and altars.