The Meeting-Place of Geology and History

hropic, and has been confounded with a very dissimilar people which succeeded it after an interval of some duration. The gap between the disappearance of th

as been that it is difficult for the ordinary reader to arrive at any certainty, in the midst of conflicting statements all based on im

the Seine and buried under newer accumulations. Belgrand has shown that in the lowest gravels of this deposit the long-headed Canstadt man is alone found. Immediately above this occur remains of the Cro-magnon type, and these are associated with and overlain by beds holding large stones or erratic blocks, a monument perhaps of the

in which we have well-ascertained evidence from fossils as well as from superposition. Without going into the details as to the

a deposit from water, bu

ain bones of rhinoceros leptorhinus, hippopotamus, bison, bear, hyena and fox, but no human remains. Dawkins, however, shows that in other caves fa

eptorhine rhinoceros is gone. The bones are gnawed by hyenas, and there are rude quartzite implements. Over this, and representing the later part of the palanthropic age, corres

e same type found in the ancient burial barrows of England, and belonging to races still extant. The Cresswell caves give no bones of pal?ocosmic men, but they very well show the succession of the early period of mild climate, the later severe climate, the ext

FROM PALANTHROPIC AND NEAN

than sixty caverns, and has carefully noted the mode of occurrence of their contents, collecting at the same time a vast number of bones and implements, now admirably arranged in the museum of Brussels. In Belgium the earlier anthr

LCHRAL CAVE OF FRONTAL,

n of angular stones and clay. (D) Slab closing the sepulchre. (S) Platform

elow. On the platform in front of the cave was a hearth with the ashes of funeral feasts, and around this were found a multitude of bones of animals, of the modern species of the country. The people who used this cave as a sepulchre had evidently arrived in Belgium after the pal?ocosmic men and the mammoth were not only extinct, but their remains were buried in muddy deposits; though the reindeer and even the wild horse still existed, and the time was long before the dawn of any authentic history in that part of the world. These men have somewhat shorter heads than the old Cro-magnon race, and they are of smaller stature, and with finer and more delicate features. In these respects they resemble the men of the dolmens and long barrows of France and England, and the existing Auvergnats and Bas

th angular stones

logists of the existence of a decided break between the palanthropic and neanthropic ages. In such a case also it is to be observed that a few de

nts exist to-day in many parts of Western Europe, though they have been more or less displaced or mixed with later intrusive races. These people have gone on without any physical cataclysm, or change of fauna, or geographical or climatal changes of any ma

s which distinguish them at a later time, and which persist to this day. There would therefore be nothing contradictory to our general view in finding that the small, fine-featured men who succeeded the giants of the olden time were in some more genial parts of the world extant from the first. Nay, it may even appear that they were similar to the Truchère race, and that still more primitive people whose bones are ye

er caves and gravels, and weapons of kinds not needed in primitive times were invented. In this state of affairs, when the coarser and stronger races had made themselves masters of the world, and had perhaps partially intermixed with the older and more peaceful peoples, a great diluvial catastrophe occurred, which swept away the greater part of men. The survivors were of the old and unmodified stock, and it was they who repeopled the new world, finding poss

aborigines, who had made their way to the island as its first population after the close of the mammoth age, the others apparently a later intrusion. They are known to English antiquaries from their modes of burial a

ish Barrows; Taylor,

o trace of metal is found in their barrows, and but little pottery, but it is believed that they had at a very early time domesticated sheep and cattle and practised agriculture. These people are now identified with the people of the south and west of England, called by the Romans Silures. They were the builders of the cromlechs, dolmens, and other megalithic structures so common in various parts of the old continent. Their type survives to this day in the small dark people of parts of Wales and the south and west of Ireland

der and shorter heads, fair complexion, and light-coloured hair. They buried their dead in round barrows or mounds, and seem at a very early period to have possessed bronze, and so to have introduced what has been termed the bronze age i

NACCIA, CORSICA (