PREHISTORIC RECORDS. 549 



About these cave-men there is necessarily much less information than 

 there is about those of the Neolithic period ; comparatively few skulls 

 have been found which were in a state that admitted of restoration ; 

 and, among these few, there are great differences. 



With regard to the antiquity of man, Sir John Lubbock, after care- 

 fully examining the views of many eminent geologists, comes to the 

 conclusion that man certainly existed in Western Europe during the 

 period of the mammoth and the Rhinoceros tichorhinus, and that the 

 presumption is that he also existed in Pliocene and even in Miocene 

 times ; but the proofs of that — the remains of the earliest representa- 

 tives of our race — are to be sought, he thinks, in warm, almost in trop- 

 ical climates. 



From the manners and customs of modern savages much light may 

 be thrown upon the eai-ly condition of prehistoric man. After consider- 

 ing the condition and progress of the Hottentots, Veddahs, Austra- 

 lians, South-Sea Islanders, Esquimaux, and others. Sir John Lubbock 

 remarks that, in reading any account of the savage races at present 

 existing in the world, " it is impossible not to admire the skill with 

 which they use their weapons and implements, their ingenuity in hunt- 

 ing and fishing, and their close and accurate powers of observation." 

 By all these qualities we may suppose prehistoric man to have been 

 distinguished in at least an equal degree. The habits and customs of 

 existing savages, however, while presenting many points in common 

 with each other, present also many points of divergence, arising from 

 independent development ; and such was no doubt also the case in the 

 most ancient times : the degrees of civilization even in the stone age 

 would differ much. 



It is evident that man when he first spread over the surface of the 

 earth must have been in a condition represented by the lowest type of 

 savage. Then by slow degrees, by imitation, and by the teaching of 

 experience, the capacity of lodging and clothing himself, and of im- 

 proving his simple implements, would develop and expand, until man, 

 physically one of the weakest and most unprotected of all animals, 

 would, to quote from our author, " by dint of that subtile force which 

 we term mind," make himself independent of nature, careless of the 

 inclemency of the seasons, skillful to force from the stubborn soil the 

 food which suited him, or the ores from which to forge the weapons 

 which gave him power ; till at last, " monarch of all he surveyed," he 

 could cope in his native coverts with the shaggy lion, and be more 

 than a match for the fierce wild-bull, and overtake in the chase the 

 fleet stag or bounding antelope. 



The wild man, like the wild beast, is always timid, always sus- 

 picious, always on the watch ; and the condition of the savage woman 

 is still more cruel. " She shares," says Sir John Lubbock, " all the 

 sufferings of her mate, and has also to bear his ill-humor and ill-usage. 

 Even the possession of beauty, far from being an alleviation, is only 



