41(5 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1896. 



animals which occupied that country during that period materially 

 changed their habitat. The causes of this change have never been com- 

 pletely deternnned, but it is supposed that climate was the principal one. 

 The foct of the change seems well established. The three species of Ele- 

 phas-the last being the mammoth, the cave bear, cave lion, cave hyena, 

 and several others-became extinct. Others-the musk ox, blue fox, 

 and more than any other, the reindeer-to the number of thirteen species 

 of animals, all cold loving, migrated to the far north and have never 

 since occupied any portion of the territory in western Europe wherein 

 they were so plenteous during this Paleolithic period. Five other spe- 

 cies of animals, like the chamois, also cold loving, changed their habi- 

 tat bv migrating to the mountains, thus making a complete change of 

 eighteen animals at the close of that period. What became of man? 

 It was believed, as has been said, that he also migrated or perished. At 

 all events, it has come to be the general belief that the evidences of his 

 presence, by objects of either art or industry, ceased altogether; that 

 there was a hiatus in the occupation of that country by man, which 

 was brought to a close by the migration or entry from the far east, of 

 Neolithic man or man with a Neolithic civilization. The diflerences 

 between these two art epochs will be treated in the next chapter. 



Learned men have speculated considerably concerning the happenings 

 at the close of the Paleolithic period in their relation to man. This was 

 necessarily speculative. It was impossible to procure definite or posi- 

 tive testimony. The only evidence obtainable consisted of the remains 

 of man or of his art or industry, while the chronologic identiftcation of 

 these as subsequent to the Paleolithic period was extremely difficult, if 

 not impossible. One theory is that he migrated to the north, as did the 

 animals which were his contemporaries. The similarity between the art 

 of the Eskimo in carving on ivory and those carvings found in the cav- 

 erns in southern France and described in this paper has furnished the 

 foundation for this theory. Another theory is that man in western 

 Europe at the close of the Paleolithic period perished. A third theory 

 is that he migrated to the for east, the Orient, assimilated with the 

 peoples there, became a part of the Aryans, and that his art, taking a 

 new lease of life, began its western peregrinations through Mesapo- 

 tamia, Ohaldea, the Caucasus, and culminated in Greece, where it formed 

 another center of culture, and, spreading through Italy in the period of 

 its decadence, it at last reached western Europe, the place of its origin 

 and birth.' 



A fourth theory is that he went— jws* ^^^ i^ °ot explained— to the 

 north of Africa. The foundation or authority for this is the supposed 

 resemblance in the anatomical and physi(;al characters between some 

 of the tribes belonging to that country and the Paleolithic man of 

 southern France. The Berbers of Africa and the Guanches of the 

 Canary Islands and the Caribs of still other islands in the same 



> Solomon Reinach, La Sculpture en Europe; I'Anthropologie, V, pp. 19-21. 



