490 THK PRK-H18T0RIC UACRS OF ITALY. 



lioar of these Pelasgi in Greece as well as iu Italy. Those megalithic 

 stnictiiivs whieh still excite our wonder — the walls of Myeerue and 

 Tiryns, as well as those of Cortona and linsselhe — are called Telasgic. 

 (-aTe an<l Cortona are said to have been Pelasgic cities prior to the 

 Etrnscan conquest. We ninst therefore begin by asking who were 

 these Telasgi. The modern doctrine, it is hardly needfnl to say, is that 

 the word has no ethnological significance, the name Pelasgic being 

 merely eqnivalent to " ancient" or " aboriginal." The term was a term 

 of ignorance, like the word "natives" now applied to Polynesians, 

 Patagonians, IJed Indians, or Maoris. We may therefore leave the 

 Pelasgians ont of account ; or rather, try and find out what races were 

 grouped together by ancient writers under this convenient but delusive 

 appellation. 



What we may call " the ethnological horizon " has wonderfully widened 

 of late years. For vast periods, for many millenniums, we are able to 

 trace the history of man in Europe. ITe is now proved to have been 

 the contemporary of the great extinct carnivora and pachyderms, and 

 to have followed northward the retreating ice sheet of the last glacial 

 ei>och. The history of these primeval races has been traced by the 

 tools and weapons which tliey have left, and by the shape and charac- 

 ter of their skulls. 



Arclneologists have distinguished the successive ages of stone, bronze, 

 and iron. Tiie bronze age in Italy is believed to have commenced 

 some 4,000 years ago. The stone age, which preceded it, is divided 

 into two epochs, the Pal;i;olithic age, or age of chipped Hints, and the 

 Neolithic age, when the Hint implements were ground or polished. The 

 Pahcolithic people were utter savages, clad in skins, living iu caves or 

 rock shelters, making use of no fixed sepulchers, subsisting on shell 

 lish or the products of the chase, ignorant of pottery, without bows 

 and arrows, and armed merely with spears, tipped with flint, horn, or 

 bone. 



Skulls which are believed to be of Palneolithic age have been found 

 in various parts of Italy — at Olmo, at Isola del Liri, at Mentone, and 

 in some Sicilian caves. They are all dolichocephalic, or long skulls. 

 Owing to the i)resence in their refuse heaps of human bones which 

 seem to have been broken in order to extract the marrow, it is believed 

 that these people occasionally practised cannibalism. But their chief 

 food seems to have consisted of wild horses of a small breed, which 

 then roamed over Europe in immense herds. Enormous refuse heaps, 

 consisting mainly of the bones of horses, have been found outside the 

 caves which were inhabited by this race. In the caves at the foot of 

 Monte Pellegrino, near Palermo, the floor is formed by a magma of the 

 bones of wild horses, which were either stalked with si)ears, driven by 

 the hunters into pit-falls, or chased over the cliti's. Similar deposits 

 have been found at the cave of Thiiyngen, in Switzerland, and in front 

 of the rock shelter at Solutre, near Macon, where there is a vast de- 



