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FIG. 73.-Flint pick from the Lower Pleistocene of the Thames Valley. Two-thirds the size of the object.

"eoliths," are (as I think many of them are) the work of man, and whether the high-lying gravels in which they are found are to be regarded as of the oldest Pleistocene Age or as late Pliocene.

FIG. 74-A rough type of flint implement from the Lower Pleistocene of the Somme Valley (St. Acheuil). One-half the size of the object.

It is an exciting and deeply interesting field of practical exploration and reasoned inference.

It will have been gathered from what I have said that, in seeking for knowledge of the sequence of events in the period of Palæolithic Man, everything depends upon extreme care in removing the deposits from a cave inch by inch, and keeping all objects found distinct from one another and assigned to their proper layer. The same system is now applied with great success to the exploration of ancient cities in Egypt and Central Asia.

As to the actual

bones and skulls of men discovered in these Pleistocene deposits, they show us that the Reindeer Men were a fine, full-brained people, as we should expect, with as large a brain cavity on the average as that of modern

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FIG. 75.-A profile and a front view of the skull and lower jaw of a man of the Cromagnard race or Reindeer
Men. This is the type-skull from Cromagnon. The teeth have fallen out of their sockets, and the articular
condyle of the up-turned part of the lower jaw is broken away. The cranial dome and the forehead are
as large as in good modern European skulls. Compare with Fig. 65, and refer to the explanation of that
figure for the meaning of the letters and dotted lines.

N.B.-This drawing, and one or two of the other figures of skulls, are reversed, giving right side for left,
to facilitate the comparison of one with the other. All are one-third (linear) of the natural size.

Europeans. The skulls of this race, which do not differ in character from those of highly developed modern races, were first found at Cromagnon, and hence we may call them "the Cromagnards" (Fig. 75). The Neander Men are the men of the middle period -the last glacial period-who were displaced by the splendid and accomplished Cromagnards. The Neander Men, of which the new French specimen (Fig. 65) from the cave of the Chapelle-aux-Saints is one, were a very inferior race, and so different from any living race of men as to justify the recognition of them as a distinct species of man, the Homo Neanderthalensis. Only a few other imperfect skulls and skeletons of them are known (Figs. 76 and 77), and show them to have been short people, with very low, flat heads and retreating foreheads. It is in accordance with what one would expect, that they should make no works of art, and should be displaced, as climatic conditions changed for the better, by the arrival of the fine, full-brained Cromagnards or Reindeer Men. But where did they, these delightful artists and happy hunters of the Reindeer Epoch, come from? We cannot say. And what became of them? We do not know. They did not give rise to the Neolithic race, but were replaced, turned out by that race. To them, indeed, are appropriate the words of the Roman poet-Prolem sine matre creatam, mater sine prole defuncta.

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XLII

THE CAVE-MEN'S SKULLS

CERTAIN number of human skulls and a few complete skeletons have been found in the cave-deposits, and even in open ground (as at Predmont, in Moravia) associated with the bones of extinct animals, or with carvings and ornaments like those which occur abundantly in the caverns. The ancient cave-men of the Cromagnard type often called "the Reindeer Men"-buried their dead. sometimes in the caves, but more usually in the open. Sometimes the skeletons are found in a crouching position, as though tied up when buried; more rarely (as in some examples found in the caves at Mentone) they are stretched out and decorated with a necklace or wreath made of shells, or of the teeth or small bones of animals. In many cases the flesh was removed from the corpse, and red ochre was smeared on the bones (as by some recent savages). The "Reindeer" people used red ochre and charcoal to colour the engravings of animals (Fig. 71) which they made on the walls of their caves, and probably for painting or tattooing their own faces. The existence of these wall paintings, wonderful representations of bison, great ox, deer, and other animals, proves that these men had artificial light (lamps or torches) to send fitful gleams on to the paintings, and it is probable that the "wall pictures" had to do with some kind of witch

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