12 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The cave of Cro-Maguon, in the same department, was rich in 

 human skulls, skeletons, and handiwork ; among other articles were 

 perforated shells, evidently once worn in necklaces. Contrary to rule, 

 bones of the mammoth were here associated with those of the reindeer. 



At Chavaux, Belgium, was a deposit of remains, the disposition 

 and other indications of which almost compel the belief that the place 

 was the scene of a cannibal feast. The human skulls and bones are 

 all of young women and boys, witnessing to a decided preference for 

 young and tender flesh on the part of our anthropophagic ancestors. 

 These bones were split open longitudinally, as was the custom with 

 those of animals, for the extraction of marrow. This and similar 

 discoveries in other caves throw a singular light upon the habits and 

 culture of the men of this time. 



Many Belgian caves, and notably that of Chaleux on the Lesse, 

 yield large collections of mammal bones and stone implements. 



The digging of a mill-race through a peat-bed at Schussenried, a 

 village not far from Ravensburg, revealed a station very rich in archae- 

 ological relics of this age. It was probably little more than the rub- 

 bish-heap of a station near at hand. There was here a profusion of 

 flint articles, and bones and antlers of the reindeer. The mosses and 

 snail-shells of the peat of this vicinity belong, like the mammals men- 

 tioned, to arctic and Alpine species, and are thus another evidence of 

 the rigors of the climate of that time. 



A station at Saleve, near the Swiss frontier, contains reindeer-bones 

 of the Reindeer age, and stone axes, and human bones of the preced- 

 ing Age of Mammoths.' 



Switzerland and the Rhine valley below Basle have furnished but 

 few relics of the Reindeer age, while France has many localities yield- 

 ing quantities from both this and the Mammoth period, which are 

 the two earlier Stone ages, the third and last of which will be next 

 discussed. 



So far, we have found human bones, skulls, skeletons, axes, knives, 

 spear-heads, needles, ornaments, etc., of the periods discussed, in 

 almost every country of Europe in Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, 

 and the soil of classic Rome itself, as well as in the northern regions. 



The Age of Polished Stone. This name has been given by 

 French writers to the third era of prehistoric human existence, on 

 account of the characteristic smoothness and polish of the stone im- 

 plements. 



The distribution of land and sea, the relief of the surface, the 

 climate, and the flora and fauna of this age, were substantially as they 

 are now. 



Among its oldest memorials and the age probably ended about 



' After a new and critical study of this deposit, Prof. Riitimeyer believes it to be a 

 confused mingling of remains from various epochs. 



