326 THE TROGLODYTES. 



open to the north. In them these people lived throughout the year, as 

 Ave discover by the remains of their rej)asts. We find that the young of 

 the deer formed their food at each stage of its development, and by the 

 study of the teeth, the bones, and the growth of the horn, we can esti- 

 mate their age, and, consequently, at what season of the year thej'were 

 killed. We conclude, therefore, that the troglodytes had a fixed \Aace 

 of abode ; in other words, that they were not nomads. 



When they started on their fishing or hunting expeditious, they closed 

 the mouths of their caves to prevent the incursion of carnivorous ani- 

 mals. A bone found at the Madelaine shows the marks of the teeth of 

 a hyena, which, probably by accident, had gained admittance. The 

 hyena was rare at this i^eriod, but wolves and foxes were numerous, and 

 if the bones, scattered freely over the floors of the caves, were undis- 

 turbed by them, it was because they were carefully excluded. 



By what means was the entrance to these habitations guarded ? In 

 other localities we find sepulchral caves closed by a slab of stone. This 

 answered very well for the dead, but the living required a door more 

 easily removed, and as no vestige remains in these caves of a defense of 

 stone, we conclude that palisades were used for this purpose. 



They lived by hunting and fishing. Did they add to their regime any 

 vegetable nutriment ? There is no proof of this. We find, it is true, in the 

 three localities of the last period, a certain number of stones of granite, 

 sandstone, or quartz, rounded and polished by friction, with a regular 

 cuij-shaped depression on one side, which resemble small mortars. It 

 has been suggested that these were intended to receive the end of a 

 piece of dry wood, which was then turned rapidly with the hands, in 

 order to produce fire — a celebrated custom of the ancient Aryans, and 

 still observed among savages ; but these vessels are too shallow in pro- 

 portion to their width for this purpose. They were evidently mortars, 

 and certain rounded stones of the size of the cup seem to have been 

 used as pestles. Hence has arisen the supposition that the troglodytes 

 j)ouuded or bruised grain to prepare it for food, but everything tends to 

 prove that they knew nothing of agriculture, and these mortars were 

 probably intended for the preparation of i)oisons or colors. 



Their principal occupation and means of support was the chase. They 

 hunted animals of every size, from the little bird to the huge mammoth. 

 This old giant of Quaternary times still survived, although he had be- 

 come very rare. For a long time it was supposed that he became extinct 

 about the middle of the Quaternary i^eriod, and when several teeth of 

 the animal, and various pieces of carved ivory were found in the more 

 recent troglodytic localities of the Vezere, it was thought by many per- 

 sons that these remains belonged to an anterior epoch ; that long after 

 the extinction of the mammoth, man collected and used the fossil ivory, 

 as is done to-day by the people of Siberia. In that polar region the 

 summer heat affects only a superficial stratum of the ground; the lower 

 soil has been frozen for centuries, and has preserved the bodies of mam- 



