LITMIR.BIZ

      FLINT HACHE OF THE ANCIENT OR CHELLEAN TYPE, AURILLAC (after Carthaillac)

The bones, implements and weapons, and débris of the feasts of these primitive peoples are to be found principally in caves of residence or of sepulture, [15] and in the alluvia deposited by rivers, and in a few cases in rock fissures or 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 structures, and, like some modern savages, may have disposed of their dead in such a way that their bones could not have been preserved. In such cases we can hope to obtain, and then very rarely, only stone implements and other imperishable relics.

[15] Caverns, in relation to this subject, may be divided into those of residence, in which early men have lived and have left therein the débris of their food, the ashes and cinders of their fires, and implements, &c.; 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 different conditions in the deposits on its successive floors. Thus men may have inhabited a cave for a time; it may next have been invaded by river floods depositing mud, and it may subsequently have been used for burial.

      Notwithstanding these limitations, however, it is wonderful that so much has been recovered from the ground by the diligence of collectors, and that the material thus obtained has proved so fertile in information respecting our long-perished ancestors.

      Supposing, then, that we search for remains of palæocosmic men in river alluvia, or in caves of residence or burial, or in similar repositories, the question next arises, by what means can we distinguish their bones from those of later times? The following criteria are available:

      (1) The remains were in their present condition at least as long ago as the date of the earliest history or tradition. This evidence is of course of greatest value in those regions 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 Phœnicians and Canaanites in Syria, are in a different position, in so far as history is concerned, from those occurring in countries whose written history goes back only a few centuries.

      (2) The deposits containing these remains may underlie those holding relics of historic times, or may indicate different physical conditions of the districts in which they occur from those known within historic periods. This is the case with some river beds, as those of Grenelle, near Paris, and with the successive deposits in old caves of residence.

      (3) They may be accompanied by remains of animals now extinct in the regions in question, and whose disappearance and replacement by the modern fauna implies great lapse of time and physical changes; as, for instance, when we find that men have left remains of their feasts holding bones of the extinct woolly rhinoceros and his contemporaries, or in now temperate climates, those of the reindeer.

      (4) The remains themselves may indicate a race or races of men and a condition of the arts of life different from any known in the region in historic times. Thus we may have skulls and skeletons indicating men racially distinct from any now extant, and implements and weapons different from those in use in the times of history or tradition.

We have now to consider what evidence of this kind vindicates the assertion that man existed on our continents in the second continental or post-glacial age, or, as others will have it, in the closing period of 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, is too voluminous to be reproduced here. [16] But a few examples of it may be given, more especially from parts of the old world whose history extends farthest back and where explorations have been most extensive.

[16] Reference may be made to Christy and Lartet, Reliquiæ Aquitanicæ; Quatrefages, Homme Fossile; Dupont, L'Homme pendant les Ages de Pierre; Carthaillac, La France Préhistorique; Dawkins, Cave Hunting and Early Man in Britain; Fossil Men and Modern Science in Bible Lands, by the author.

My first instance shall be one originally described by Canon Tristram, and which I had an opportunity to examine in 1884—the caverns or rock shelters in the face of the limestone cliff of the pass of Nahr-el-Kelb, north of Beyrout. At this place, in old caverns partly cut away in the forming of the Roman road round the cliff, there is a hard stalagmite, or modern limestone, produced by the calcareous drippings from the rock. This is filled with broken bones intermixed with flint flakes suitable for use as knives or spears or darts, and occasional fragments of charcoal. The bones are those of large animals, 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 Phœnicians penetrated into this country, perhaps 3000 B.C., and that the deposits existed in their present state when

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