ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF PARIS 389 



to conceive how men destitute of tlic use of metals were able to fabricate of 

 bone, ivory, the antlers of the reindeer, an infinite variety of very delicate nten- 

 sils; to carve, I had almost said to chisel, elegant forms, and to represent by 

 designs engraved in line on the handles of their instruments the iignres of differ- 

 ent animals, 'i'hese figures are distinguished by an exactness and artistic skill 

 truh' remarkable, and to find in an equal degree the sentiment of art it would 

 be necessary to revert, through many centuries, to the better times of Greece. 

 They form a contrast so absolute with the rude delineations traced on some Cel- 

 tic monuments, that it might be asked whether they have not been designed, 

 since the historic era, by fugitives who may have sought refuge in tile caves of 

 our ancient troglodytes. But what other than tlie man of the quaternary period 

 could Lave designed in Europe, on the bones or horns of the reindeer, the figure 

 of a species of elephant whicli differs from all living species? This race of men, 

 so interesting through its civilization, led a peaceable existence. A skull found 

 in the grotto of Bruni(piel,of which M. Bran has sent us the photograpli, is dis- 

 tinguished by the })urity of its form, the softness of its outlines, the little 

 , prominence of the apophyses, the slight depth of the muscular insertions ; 

 characters incompatible with the violent habits of a savage or barbarous race. 



What, then, became of this indigenous civilization, so original, soditferent from 

 all those which are known to us'? Was it modified by slow degrees and trans- 

 forroed to the extent of becoming at last wholly unrecognizable? No; it has 

 disappeared in the mass without leaving any trace, and everything tends to the 

 belief that it perished by force. After it, without transition, we find only the 

 impress. of a powerful race, religious and warlike, furnished with improved 

 arms and familiar with the polishing of silex, but otherwise little addicted to 

 industr}' and altogether alien to the notion of art. There are here all the indi- 

 cations of a brutal and successful invasion. The troglodytes of the age of stone, 

 who had learned to conquer the soil and to destroy the last remains of the great 

 mammals of the quaternary fauna, knew not how to defend themselves against 

 the irruption of the bar}>arians, and an intermediate prehistoric age was inter- 

 polated as successor to the bright epoch of a premature civilization, whose origin 

 is thus far wholly unknown. 



These men of the age of the; reindeer, so much advanced in certain respects 

 were probably the descendants, l)ut the softened and cultivated descendants, 

 of the rude savages of the epoch of the diluvium. Oftener than once, in the soil 

 of the same caverns, the lower strata are found to have enclosed the remains of the 

 rhinoceros and the mammoth, while the superficial layers contained only the relics 

 of the reindeer. The industry of which silex constituted the material had, from the 

 first to the second epoch, been a little modified, but not transformed; and if a more 

 regular cutting, with small fragments, had replaced the more rudimentary execution 

 of earlier days, it was still by pure and simple percussion, without any process of 

 abrasion, that the silex was elaborated. These changes moreover scarcely appear 

 except in the fabrication of the axes; the knives continued to present a remark- 

 able uniformity. It is probable, in fact, that the art of design was already known 

 to the cotemporaries of the Ursus spvlrcus. This would appear at least to result 

 i'rom the curious figure which that indefatigable explorer of the caverns of the 

 Pyrenees, M. Garrigou, has discovered on a silicious stone, taken by him from a 

 grotto cf)ntaining fossil bones. This figure represents a l)ear which, in the length 

 of the spinal apophyses of its neck, resembles luon; the bear of the caves than 

 any other species of the same animal. If the interpretation of i\[. Garrigou be 

 confirmed, it will be interesting to have thus found the origin of the art of design 

 among a race, susceptible, no doubt, of improvement, but whicli, at the epoch in 

 question, was half-savage, and which perhaps was still committed to the j)rac- 

 tice of anthropophagisin. M. Garrigou, in effect, and ^I. Ronjou after him, 

 have exhibited to the societv several human bones on which are seen the traces 



