THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 



449 



less prosperous districts. Lying mainly south of tlie dwarfed 

 areas of Limousin, tliey are intermediate between its miserable 

 people and their taller neighbors in the vine country about Bor- 

 deaux. Let it be clearly understood that they are not a degener- 

 ate type at all. The peasants are keen and alert ; often contrast- 

 ing favorably with the rather heavy-minded Alpine type about 

 them. 



The people we have described above agree in physical charac- 

 teristics with but one other type of men known to anthropologists. 

 This is the celebrated Cro-Magnon race, long ago identified by 

 archaeologists as having inhabited the southwest of Europe in 

 prehistoric times. As early as 1858 human remains began to be 

 discovered by Lartet and others in this region. Workmen on a 

 railway in the valley of the Vdzere, shown on our map, un- 

 earthed near the little village of Les Eyzies the complete skele- 

 tons of six individuals three men, two women, and a child. This 

 was the celebrated cave of Cro-Magnon. In the next few years 

 many other similar archaeological discoveries in the same neigh- 

 borhood were made. A peasant in the upper Garonne Valley, 

 near Saint-Gaudens, found a large human bone in a rabbit hole. 

 On excavating, the remains of seventeen individuals were found 





Cbo-Magn-on Type. Dordogne. Ocplialir Iiuli'X, "i. 



buried together in the cave of Aurignac. At Laugerie Basse, 

 again in the V^zere Valley, a rich find was made. In the cave of 

 Baumes-Chaudes, just across in Lozere, thirty-five human crania 

 with portions of skeletons were unearthed. These were the clas- 

 sical discoveries ; the evidence of their remains has been com- 

 pletely verified since then from all over Europe. In no district, 

 however, are the relics of this type so plentiful as here in Dor- 



VOL. LI. 34 



