Figure 77.

Skull of a woman found at Sordes, showing a severe wound from which she recovered.

Of the nineteen crania found in the Neolithic sepulchre of Vauréal two show traces of old wounds. One of them, that of a woman, has three different scars, two of which were of wounds that had healed, whilst the third in the occiput was a gaping hole, which had evidently caused death.

A sepulchral cave at Nogent-les-Vierges (Oise) contains the skeleton of a man with a wound on the forehead, no less than four and a half inches long by three broad. This man, who was dune young, the sutures being still very apparent, survived this serious wound for some time.

The Gourdan Cave has yielded crania and jaws broken by blunt weapons, whilst on other crania have been made out scratches and stripes which could only have been produced after the hair and skin had been removed. In the caves of the Petit-Morin valley, M.de Baye picked up some human vertebra pierced with flints, the points of which were still imbedded in the bones. In the Villevenard Cave one skull was found containing three arrow-beads with transverse points imbedded in the skull, the bone of which had closed upon them. Another arrow was lodged between the dorsal vertebrae. It is probable that these arrows had remained in the wounds; certainly that is the simplest way to account for their position. About two miles from the caves of which we have been speaking, M.de Baye discovered a sepulchre containing thirty skeletons, all of adult and strongly built individuals. The bodies were laid one above the other, and separated by large flat stones and a thin layer of earth. This sepulchral cave contained seventy-three flint points.

As in the case of Villevenard, their position leads us to suppose that these points had been sticking in the flesh of the bodies when they were interred, and had fallen out when decomposition set in. Probably the bodies were those of men who had fallen victims in a bloody conflict that had taken place in the valley. In a cave at the station of Oyes, was found stretched upon a bed of stones a skeleton with a piece of flint, which had been flung with great force, imbedded in the upper part of the humerus. Round about the wound are the marks of many attempts at healing it.

Many of the human bones found in the Vivarais Cave bear traces of having been violently fractured by stone weapons with tapering points. In the Challes Cave (Savoy) lies the skeleton of a woman whose skull was fractured by a flint weapon, but in this case death was evidently immediate, at least if we may judge from the fact that there are no signs of the wound having received any treatment. In the Castellet Cave, a human vertebra contained the weapon which had pierced it, but when the bone was touched the arrow-head broke off. It had, however, been flung with such a sure hand that it had been driven ten inches deep into the bony tissue. Here, too, the absence of any exostosis proves that death quickly followed the wound.