HOW THE EARTH WAS PEOPLED. 759 



To M. de Mortillet, the European Magdalenean race was only a 

 modified prolongation of that of Chelles and Moustier. Mixtures by 

 migration and the co-existence of several races having differently 

 shaped skulls were posterior to the recent quaternary and to the ex- 

 tinction of the mammoth and the retreat of the reindeer to the north. 

 Then came an age in which, the climate having undergone ameliora- 

 tion, the glaciers having retired to the foot of the mountains, and the 

 sea having withdrawn from Northern Europe to within its present 

 limits, a new era was inaugurated. This was the era of continuous 

 development and activity, the progress of which at last leads us step 

 by step to the invention of metals and to history proper. The last 

 period, however, includes many sub-periods. The metals were still 

 unknown for a long time, and stone continued to be the only material 

 used in making working-tools. A few arts, the necessary point of de- 

 parture for all society, had, however, begun to be exercised : among 

 them were the domestication of useful animals, beginning with the 

 dog ; agriculture, and consequently the adoption of some of the food- 

 plants ; the use of pottery ; and, finally, the grouping of men and 

 their habitations in view of common defense, and also of the observ- 

 ance of religious rites. To an age of this kind, which has left a host 

 of points in Europe, from Scandinavia to Switzerland, and from the 

 heart of France to Southern Italy, M. de Mortillet has given the name 

 Robenhausian. To follow it on this new ground through its progress 

 to the age of bronze, would require the consideration of details that 

 would carry us too far. It was the age of the dolmens and of the 

 lake-villages ; in it man was beginning to grow out of his infancy. 

 Although, at least in Europe, he was not acquainted with the use of 

 metals, and possessed only a rudimentary agriculture and industry, 

 and although his food was still scanty and his existence precarious, he 

 had already begun to sow wheat and barley ; he wove coarse linen 

 cloths ; he made vessels of pottery and hardened them in the fire ; and 

 he built real monuments to his dead, artificial representations of caves 

 made by piling rough stones together. Religious rites and invoca- 

 tions, a kind of luxury in furniture, and medical and surgical pro- 

 cesses, came in vogue. We feel that we are on the verge of great 

 inventions and of gigantic efforts, tending to enlarge the formerly 

 extremely narrow circle of knowledge and of processes. Translated 

 for the Popular Science Monthly from the Revue des Deux Mondes. 



