68o SCIENCE PROGRESS 



Enfants near Mentoni has served at various times as a 

 sepulchre ; the corpses have not been inhumed but simply laid 

 upon the floor as it existed at the time, and protected by 

 blocks of stone. The earliest of these interments took place in 

 Solutrian times ; it was that of an old woman and a boy not 

 more than seventeen years of age ; cave earth subsequently 

 accumulated and covered them up, other interments followed, 

 and a continual accumulation of the cave earth, so that when 

 the skeletons of the woman and boy were discovered they lay 

 10 meters below the surface of the ground. They have been 

 studied in great detail by Dr. Verneau. 1 



The skulls are dolichocephalic (index close on 69), the 

 glabella is slightly prominent, the nose flat, with nasal gutters 

 at the base (a peculiarly Negroid character), the jaws prog- 

 nathous, the chin slightly retreating, the palate parabolic in 

 outline, the teeth large and Australoid in character. The height 

 of the woman was about 1,580 mm., of the boy about 1,540 mm. 

 The average height of the Bushmen is 1,530 mm., with a range 

 between 1,400 and 1,650 mm. This interment proves, therefore, 

 the existence of two individuals belonging to a Negroid race 

 of low stature, and of sufficient consideration to receive a 

 ceremonial burial. We may infer that they lived among friends, 

 and most probably therefore with people of their own race. 

 Steatopygous figurines found in adjacent caves at Mentoni 

 strengthen this conclusion, and the evidence that Mentoni was 

 inhabited in Solutrian times by a race closely allied to the 

 Bushmen amounts almost to positive proof. That this race 

 extended over the south of France and the north of Spain is 

 highly probable. It may even have reached Belgium, as is 

 suggested by the figurine found at Pont-a-Lesse, or Moravia, 

 though we do not as yet know what are the characters of the 

 statuettes found at Predmost. 2 



That Solutrian Europe was inhabited exclusively by a 

 Negroid race seems unlikely,; in this connection the figurines 

 assigned by Piette to another group must not be overlooked. 

 Venturing more deeply into hypothesis, we might suppose that 

 the Negroid Solutrian stock was of Mediterranean origin, and 

 that it pushed its way into Europe till it met with the re- 

 sistance of an alien population. After a time, under pressure 



1 R. Verneau, " Les grottes de Grimaldi," L Anthropologic, 1906, xvii. p. 291. 



2 We now know that this Negroid race extended as far as Vienna. 



