474 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



palaeolithic and neolithic, by Sir John Lubbock, 

 been shaken ; they are separated from one an- 

 other by the greatest changes in climate and 

 geography, and in animal life, which have taken 

 place since the arrival of man in Europe. Our 

 author, however, denies this, and brings forward 

 a series of examples derived, for the most part, 

 from accounts either unverified by subsequent 

 observers or in themselves equivocal, to show that 

 the palaeolithic men possessed domestic horses, 

 oxen, pigs, dogs, and " hens," and were acquainted 

 with the art of making pottery. We have no 

 space to examine each of these statements in 

 detail. We would merely say that the scientific 

 exploration of caverns and tombs is by no means 

 easy, and that until comparatively recently every- 

 thing of unknown date found in them was sup- 

 posed to belong to about the same age. Hence 

 it is that the literature of archaeology offers to 

 the author the examples which he gives us. 



With regard to pottery it must be remarked 

 that the vessels assigned to a palaeolithic age, 

 such as that of the Trou de Frontal, belong to 

 well-known neolithic types, and that the domes- 

 tic animals assigned to the same age are identical 

 with those of the neolithic farmers and herds- 

 men. Caves were used by the neolithic peoples 

 for purposes of habitation and burial. The duty, 

 therefore, of proving that these things are of 

 palaeolithic age rests with the author; it is not 

 the business of a reviewer to undertake proof 

 of a negative that they are not. The assertion, 

 however, that no neolithic implements have been 

 met with in the same cave as the so-called " fossil 

 man of Mentone," whom we have always believed 

 to belong to that age, is negatived by the polished 

 celt from that cave which we have seen in the 

 museum at St.-Germain — an important fact, 

 which, strangely enough, has escaped the notice 

 of all who have hitherto written on the subject. 



We shall not repeat the arguments in favor 

 of the palaeolithic age of the interments at Solutre, 

 which have already been combated in this re- 

 view. We have always held that they are not 

 earlier than Gallo-Itoman times. The results of 

 the further researches of MM. Ducrost and Arcelin, 

 in 1875— "7G, show that, above the strata contain- 

 ing the remains of mammoth, reindeer, horses, 

 and palaeolithic implements, there is a stratum 

 containing polished stone axes, iron and bronze 

 implements, and interments of the neolithic, Gallo- 

 Roman Burgundian times. The so-called palaeo- 

 lithic are in all probability referable to one of 

 these three ages, and from the fact of the skele- 

 tons resting at full length to one or other of the 

 last two periods. 



The author is not centent with bridging over 

 the interval between the neolithic and palaeolithic 

 times by the asserted occurrence in the latter of 

 characteristics hitherto to be considered peculiar 

 to the former. He tells us that extinct pleistocene 

 animals lived " some of them down to historic 

 and even post-Roman times." In support of this 

 view he brings forward the occurrence of the 

 mammoth from the peat-bogs of Holyhead, Tor- 

 quay, and Colchester, just as if there were no 

 peat-bogs in the pleistocene times — as, for ex- 

 ample, the preglacial forest-bed, with mammoth 

 and other creatures, on the shores of Norfolk and 

 Suffolk. He relies also upon the fresh condition 

 of the carcasses of the Siberian mammoth as evi- 

 dence against high antiquity, just as if ice would 

 not preserve anything imbedded in it for an in- 

 definite length of time. 



Palaeontologists will be astonished to hear that 

 the cave-bear has been met with in the peat-bogs 

 of Denmark, and in Italy in association with relics 

 of the neolithic age. The first of these reputed 

 occurrences has been given up by M. Nilsson, 

 and the second has not been verified by any com- 

 petent authority. The latter observation will also 

 hold good regarding the reputed occurrence of 

 the cave-lion in the peat of Holderness. The 

 Irish elk is asserted by our author to have been 

 living in the marshes of Europe as late as the 

 fourteenth century, a statement based on a spec- 

 ulation of Brandt's that the Machlis of Pliny 

 and the Schelch of the " Nibelungenlied " are 

 identical with that animal. The palaeolithic im- 

 plements themselves (page 220) are traced to the 

 1 stone axe from Babylon, preserved in the British 

 Museum, of a " palaeolithic type which reappeared 

 in Europe when some of the ruder Turanian tribes 

 migrated in that direction." 



It is not profitable to pursue this review 

 further, for in this work one printed statement 

 is treated as if it were of equal value with an- 

 other, without any attempt being made to sift 

 the improbable from the probable, or the true 

 from the false. The facts are brought together 

 in it very much like flies — if one may indulge in 

 a comparison — on a fly-paper, and bear the same 

 relation to each other as the heterogeneous col- 

 lection. of dead and dying winged creatures there 

 brought together in a strange fellowship. We 

 regret that the writer should have spent so much 

 time as he evidently has spent in collecting mat- 

 ter for a book written without scientific method, 

 and which certainly does not prove that the age 

 of the mammoth is removed from the present 

 time by an interval of from six to ten thousand 

 years. — Nature. 



