206 



EVOLUTION AND GENETICS 



accompany departure from purely objective mental processes, a 

 step in evolution limited to man. Their well-worked flints and 

 use of fire indicate a degree of control over the environment not 

 previously approached. No longer subject to the untempered 

 vicissitudes of life in the open, they could make themselves 

 reasonably comfortable in their caves during severe weather. 

 Food and protection were assured by their powerful bodies, aided 

 by the use of weapons, and their mental development was such 

 as to guarantee gradual improvement of the means at their dis- 

 posal. 



The race lived for several thousands of years, but finally became 

 extinct. Some authorities have believed that they developed into 



Fig. 121. — Reindeer, cave bear, and two horses, from rock engravings in the 

 Grotte de la Mairie, Dordogne. (From Men of the Old Stone Age by Henry 

 Fairfield Osborn, after Capitan and Breuil, courtesy of Charles Scribner's 

 Sons.) 



the lower races of Homo sa-piens, but the opinion generally held 

 is that they were exterminated through the arrival of a more highly 

 endowed race, the Cro-Magnon. 



The Cro-Magnon Race. Unlike the other fossil men, this was a 

 race of Homo sapiens, physically and mentally equal to many ex- 

 isting peoples. It was first made known to science through the 

 discovery of five skeletons at Cro-Magnon, France. They were 

 tall people, males averaging over six feet and females almost five 

 and one-half, and were fully erect. The forehead was high but 

 narrow, the face broad, the chin well developed. The brain was 

 large. Osborn says that the facial characters are most suggestive 

 of Asiatic races of the present (Fig. 11 5C). 



