The Meeting-Place of Geology and History

hic,' from the use of impleme

he glacial period, when the cold had passed away and a genial climate had succeeded, and when the continents of the northern hemisphere had attained to their

ccessible, and the relics which we find must be those of inland tribes or of those who were driven inland by the encroachments of the waters. Our means of information are thus limited, and we must be prepared to admit that there may have been in this age great and populous communities of which we can have no record, at least of a geologic

NT OR CHELLEAN TYPE, AUR

marine gravels, into which remains were drifted, or in which they were deposited by water. Here, again, we have another limitation, for it is possible that large populations may have lived on plains or in forests in perishable structure

.; those of sepulture, in which the bodies of the dead have been deposited; and those of inundation, into which the bodies of animals or men have been drifted by floods. The same cave may, however, exhibit these diffe

covered from the ground by the diligence of collectors, and that the material thus o

of residence or burial, or in similar repositories, the question next arises, by what means c

gions in which history extends farthest back. Thus the remains of early men in the Lebanon caves, which we know date much farther back than the arrival of the first Ph?nicians

ent physical conditions of the districts in which they occur from those known within historic periods. This is the ca

the modern fauna implies great lapse of time and physical changes; as, for instance, when we find that men have left remains of the

any known in the region in historic times. Thus we may have skulls and skeletons indicating men racially distinc

the glacial age, and was contemporary with the mammoth and other great beasts now extinct. This evidence, which has been accumulating with great rapidity and relates to many parts of the northern hemisphere, i

e; Dupont, L'Homme pendant les Ages de Pierre; Carthaillac, La France Préhistorique; Dawkins, Ca

imals, and have been broken for the extraction of the marrow; and the whole is evidently the remnants of the cuisine of some primitive tribe of hunters, now cemented into a somewhat hard stone by stalagmitic matter. The bones are not those of the present animals of Syria, but principally of an extinct species of rhinoceros (R. tichorhinus), a species of bison, and other large mammals which inhabited the region in the pleistocene and post-glacial periods. It is farther known that these animals had been extinct long before the early Ph?nicians penetrated into this country, perhaps 3000 B.C., and that t

e illustrat

cience in Bible Lands; also Egypt and Syria, in

ce and Belgium a vast number of interesting relics of pal?ocosmic

e feet above the present ordinary level of the river, but in post-glacial times seems to have been invaded by inundations, as it shows on its floor five di

ble ancestor of the lion of Western Asia, the latter closely allied to the grizzly bear of North America, but both entirely extinct in Europe. One of the ske

BELGIUM (sectio

clay deposited i

modern Europe, except the reindeer, the chamois, and the wolf. But the most remarkable discovery on this surface was that of a few human bones, gnawed like the others by the hyenas. Man was thus already in the country, and contemporary with all these animals. How the hyena obtained his bones, whether from some neglected corpse or from some badly-constructed grave, will never be known; but the discovery introd

use of colouring matter for the skin or garments, bone needles, proving the manufacture of clothing by sewing, bone points for darts, skilfully-barbed bone harpoons, ornaments made of perforated teeth of animals, and fragments of bone, and a remarkable necklace of a hundred and twenty-four silicified shells of the genus Turritella, looking like spirals of agate, with a pendant made of another and larger shell. These shells are not known to occur nearer t

OF A FLINT FLAKE

oyet cave. The flat face shows a

into their caves only the legs and skulls of the larger animals they killed, leaving the carcases; though it is quite possible that, like North American

hat the numerical preponderance was in favour of the reindeer and the wild horse, though remains were found indicating seven individuals of the mammoth, and four of the rhinoceros, as having fallen a prey to the old hunters. In the highest bed the number of species and the proportions of each one are nearly the same, so that no material change in the fauna had occurred during the occupancy of this ca

iving similar testimony, and that Dupont adduces evidence to show that there may have been a contemporary plain-dwelling people, of whom less is known than of the troglodytes. Let it also

n are known in the palanthropic age, both somewhat different from any existing peoples, and known respectively as the Canstadt and Cro-magno

rock-shelters, seems to have been a favourite abode of the men of the mammoth and reindeer age. The rock-shelter of

bt had trees or shrubs in front, and may have been further completed by stones, poles, or bark placed across the opening. It seems, however, in the first instance to have been used only at intervals, and to have been left vacant for considerable portions of time. Perhaps it was visited only by hunting or war-parties. But subsequently it was permanently occupied, and this for so long a time that in some places a foot and a half of ashes and carbonaceous matter, with bone

iest part of the period. The 'Old Man of Cro-magnon' was of great stature, being nearly six feet high. More than this, his bones show that he was of the strongest and most athletic muscular development; and the bones of the limbs have the peculiar form which is characteristic of athletic men habituated to rough walking, climbing, and running; for this is, I believe, the real meaning of the enormous strength of the thigh-bone and the flattened condition of the leg in this and other old skeletons. It occurs to some extent, though much less than in this old man, in American skeletons. His skull presents all the characters of advanced age, though the teeth had been worn down to the sockets without being lost; which, again, is a character often observed in rude peoples of modern times. The skull proper, or brain-case, is very long-more so than in ordinary modern skulls-and this length is accompani

E 'OLD MAN OF CRO-MAGNON'

right side of the forehead with so clean a fracture as to indicate the extreme rapidity and force of its blow. It is inferred from the condition of the edges of this wound that she may have survived its infliction for two weeks or more. If, as is most likely, the wound was received in some sudden attack by a hostile tribe, they must have been driven off or have retired, leaving the wounded woman in the hands of her friends to be tended for a time, and then buried, either with other members of her family

idence; and interments of men of the Canstadt race have been found at Spy, in Belgium. Of course, even if interment proper had not been practised, there might have been cremation, as among the Tasmanians, or bur

OUND IN THE MENTONE

nder circumstances equally suggestive of great antiquity. Dr. Rivière, in a memoir on this skeleton, illustrated by two beautiful photographs, shows that the characters of the skull and of the bones of the limbs are similar to those of the Cro-magnon skeleton, indicating a perfect identity of race, while the objects found with the skeleton are similar in character. I had an opportunity of verifying his description by an examination of the skeleton in the Museum of the Jardin des Plantes, in 1883; and more recent discoveries at Mentone have confirmed the c

DKIN, IN BONE, FROM LAUGER

w for finger. Reduced to one-ha

THE HAND OF THE 'GIANT' SKEL

found at Clichy and Grenelle in 1868 and 1869 are described by Professor Broca and M. Fleurens as of the same general type, and the remains found at Gibraltar and in the cave of Paviland, in England, seem also to have belonged to this race. The celebrated Engis skull from one of the Belgian caves, which is believed to have belonged to a contemporary of the mammoth, is also of this type, though less massive than that of Cro-magnon; a

ES: THE OUTER GIVING THE MOR

FOUND AT SPY, BELGIUM

one race of men; and let us ask what they tell as to the position and character of palanthropic man. The testimony is here fortunatel

e skull, and the orthognathous form of the upper facial region, are incontestably evidences of superiority, which are met with usually only in the civilised races. On the other hand, the great breadth of face, the alveolar

time of no mean degree of taste and skill in carving and other arts. He might have added that this is the antithesis seen in the American tribes, among whom art and taste of various kinds, and much that

its grand development of brain-case and high facial angle-even higher apparently than in most of the

great development of the muscular processes, the extreme wearing of the teeth among a people who predominantly lived on flesh and not on grain, the obliteration of the sutures of the skull,

e, from deposits of this age, which shows that these gigantic men were contemporaneous with a feebler race of

world. It is also not improbable that this early race became extinct in Europe in consequence of the physical changes which occurred in connection with the subsidence that reduced the land to its present limits, and that the feebler race which succeeded came in as the appropriate accompaniment of a diminished land-surface and a less genial climate in the early historic period. The older races are those usually classed as pal?olithic, and ar

and features, as well as in their habits, implements, and arts. In other words, their nearest affi

re delicate and refined race represented by the solitary skull of Truchère, while the gigantic pal?ocosmic men of the European caves are more likely to have been representatives of that terrible and powerful race who filled the antediluvian world with violence, and who reappear in postdiluvian times as the Anakim and traditional giants, who constitute a feature in the early history of so many coun

and? Did he know and had he visited the more cultured nations that lived in the great plains of the Mediterranean Valley, or on that nameless river which flowed through the land now covered by the German Ocean? Had he visited or seen from afar the great island Atlantis, whose inhabitants could almost see in the sunset sky the islands of the blest? Could he have told us of the huge animals of the antediluvian world, and of the feats of the men of renown who contended with these animal giants? We can but conjecture all this. But, mute though they may be as to the details of their lives, the man of Cro-magnon and his contemporaries are eloquent of one great truth, in which they coincide with the Americans and with the primitive men of all the early ages. They tell us that primitive man had the same high cerebral organisation which he possesses now, and, we may infer, the same high intellectu

ordes, in the Pyrenees, in a very old interment of this period, there was a necklace of forty-three teeth of the cave lion and cave bear, carved with figures of animals (see p. 71). The handle of a piercer, represented on p. 59, is a marvel of skilful adaptation of an animal form to produce a handle fitted to be firmly and conveniently grasped by the human hand. The figure of the mammoth on p. 68 shows how a few bold lines may produce a vigorou

D ON A PLATE OF IVORY, FR