388 ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF PARIS. 



be recoil cvtecl tliat the 20 skulls taken by MM. Van Duben and Retzius, jr., 

 from the megalitliic sepulclir3 of Luttra, in West Grotliland, were all doliclio- 

 cephalons, with the exception of a single one. On the other hand, however, the 

 researches already mentioned of MM. Nicolucci and Pruner-bey establish with 

 entire clearness the brachycephalous character of the race which, before the era 

 of metals, occupied Liguria and the coast of Provence. At the era, then, of pol- 

 ished stone Europe already bore on its soil at least two distinct races. But those 

 times which preceded all our histories, and which seem now so remote from us, 

 appear, on the contrary, almost recent when opposed to the incalculable periods 

 which palaeontology has revealed to us, and which, temiinating with the epoch 

 of the reindeer, reascend even to the epoch of the elephant, the rhinoceros, the 

 great bear of the caves, and probably still higher, without onr being able to fix 

 the limit to which ulterior discoveries shall carry back the origin of h.uman kind. 

 During the first years of its existence, the Society of anthropology had occa- 

 sion more than once to submit to study the question of the antiquity of man. 

 At present, all discussion on this subject would be idle. The existence of the 

 fossil-man, of the man of the quarternary period, cotemporary of the great 

 pachydermata, is a fact definitively verified by science. If some protestations 

 are sHll raised here and there against the evidence, it is not among us that they 

 originate. I have made a small collection of works which have been published 

 in Prance, in the 19th century, against the heresy of the rotation of the earth. 

 Can we hope that the discovery of M. Boucher de Perthes should find more favor, 

 in certain quarters, than the discovery of Copernicus? Leave we then, as the- 

 Scripture says, the dead to bury their dead, and let us pursue our work without 

 occup3'ing ourselves with the attacks directed against us by men of the past. 



We, too, love the past; but above all we love to study it, and it is not our fault 

 if the records of the past extend far beyond the limits which it has been customary 

 to assign to them. Our curiosity is no longer content with knowing whether there 

 were men on the earth in palpeontological times. It asks wdiat was the social 

 state of those men ; what their physical characters ; whether they alread}' con- 

 stituted several distinct races ; whether they differed from those who still later 

 learned to polish stone ; and, finally, whether the immense period which elapsed 

 between the epoch of the mammoth and that of the reindeer, between that of the 

 reindeer and that of the dolmens, did not see, like the infinitely shorter periods 

 which have succeeded them, the human fauna of quaternary Europe ofttimes 

 renewed and revolutionized by great movements, migrations, and conquests 

 of the populations then existing? These questions of so high an interest are still 

 far from a solution. Nevertheless, man}' important data have been already 

 obtained, and justify us in presaging for a future, not far distant, satisfactory 

 responses. 



As regards industry, represented chiefly by instruments of silex, JM. de Mor- 

 tillet has shown us that it made gradual advances during the. ages in question. 

 In the lower deposits of the diluvium of Abbeville the axes are lance-shaped, 

 and have been cut with rude and heavy blows, forming large fragments. In the 

 argillaceous-sandy stratum which covers the diluvium, which is consequently more 

 modern, and in which no bones of the mammoth have been discovered, the axes 

 are elliptical, much elongated, and were cut with light blows, leaving small frag- 

 ments. Finally, in the superficial stratum called the movable or loose forma- 

 tion of the slopes, the axes are polished, wedge-like, and similar to those found 

 in the dolmens. Were these successive modifications of the same branch of 

 industry attributable to gradual improvements or to the arrival of new popula- 

 tions? The memorable discoveries of M. Lartet, those especially which he has 

 made in the caverns of Perigord, with the co-o})eration of our regretted col- 

 league, Christy, authorize us to consider the latter supposition as highly probable. 

 The inhabitants of Perigord possessed only cut silex ; but they had reached a 

 state of civilization and of artistic development altogether surprising. It is hard 



