THE STATURE OF MAN AT VARIOUS EPOCHS. 527 



luaniiiioth and the rhinoceros of the chambered nostrils. They in no 

 wise resemble the colossal beings created by popnlar fancy and de- 

 scribed by the poets as ''more massive than the cedar and taller than 

 the pine." Nor were they '" stronger than the oak." They lived more 

 or less miserably. The men of the tiuaternary period had already 

 begun to be industrious and they fashioned implements of roughly 

 hewn stone. This was the beginning of the paleolithic or old stone 

 age. It must have lasted a very long time, to judge from all the 

 succeeding changes of climate and water courses. 



V. 



The following age is the neolithic or new stone age. Its duration 

 was also very long, sufficiently long for Europe to be covered with its 

 megalithic monuTuents and sepulchral structures. It was the time in 

 which the cutting of flint, carried on toward a state of perfection, 

 ended in the fashioning of various instruments for fishing, hunting, 

 or fighting. These lost the rude charactt^r of the utensils in the pre- 

 ceding age, and the jDolishing of flint marked a turn in the affairs of 

 prehistoric man. 



The bony remains of the neolithic age underwent the same patient 

 investigation and the same measurements as those of the paleolithic 

 age; and Kahon and Manouvrier succeeded in determining the 

 size of the people of this time, as of the preceding. Here the facts 

 to work upon were much more numerous, for the number of skeletons 

 that have been extracted is considerable. Conclusions were drawn 

 from the examination of 429 men and 180 women. The average 

 stature of the men is 1.045 meters, of the women 1.520 meters. But 

 among these there were a number of tall and short persons, just as is 

 the case at the present time. To cite several instances, the man of 

 the Madeleine, the station next to Les Eyzies, in the department of 

 Dordogne, measured 1.80 meters. The bones found at Les Eyzies 

 belonged to still larger types. In this region Christy and Lartet 

 exhumed from the cave of Cro-Magnon three well-preserved skele- 

 tons, which have given rise to observations of extreme interest to 

 anthropology. They were the skeletons of an old man, an adult man, 

 and a woman, and they have served as types for the establishment of 

 a race become celebrated under the name Cro-Magnon. On a merely 

 superficial examination of the bones, one can tell that the persons 

 must have been robust and tall. Broca unqualifiedly declared their 

 stature to be superior to the Frenchman's ; but since it was impossible 

 to reconstruct a skeleton in its entirety, he was not in a position to 

 make direct measurements and give an indisputable figure. 



Therefore it was Avith some hesitation that he assigned to them a 

 probable height of 1.80 meters. Broca, it nnist be stated, for aid in 

 his reconstruction could not fall back upon tables that would have 



