Even then we are concerned more with quarrels than with
battles, for one of the earliest cases of wounding known in human
records, is that of a pregnant young woman found in the Cro-magnon Cave
whose skull had been cut open by a flint several weeks before death, an
indication that she had been cared for and nursed. But, again at the
beginning of the New Stone Age, in the caverns of the Beaumes-Chaudes
people, who still used implements of the Old Stone type, we find skulls
in which are weapons of the New Stone type. Evidently these people had
come in contact with a more "civilised" race which had discovered war.
Yet the old pacific race still lingered on, as in the Belgian people
of the Furfooz type who occupied themselves mainly with hunting and
fishing, and have their modern representatives, if not their actual
descendants, in the peaceful Lapps and Eskimo.[4]
It was thus at a late stage of human history, though still so primitive
as to be prehistoric, that organised warfare developed. At the dawn of
history war abounded. The earliest literature of the Aryans--whether
Greeks, Germans, or Hindus--is nothing but a record of systematic
massacres, and the early history of the Hebrews, leaders in the world's
religion and morality, is complacently bloodthirsty. Lapouge considers
that in modern times, though wars are fewer in number, the total number
of victims is still about the same, so that the stream of bloodshed
throughout the ages remains unaffected.
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