WHOLE VOL. SKELETAL REMAINS OE EARLY MAN HRDLICKA 2/5 



All the evidence indicates that the inhnniati(jns at La Ferrassie were 

 true intentional hurials, in shallow hut sufficient fossae, and covered 

 at the time of the hurial with the bones and other materials that were 

 found above the skeletons. 



Shallow burials in occupied caves or beneath the floor of a dwelling, 

 of infants and even adults, in very much the same postures, are well 

 known to the American archeologists, and these cannot but be forcibly 

 impressed by the close resemblance of the conditions at La Ferrassie 

 to what they have witnessed over and over again in old Lidian caves 

 and habitations. 



The Mousterian layer containing the La Ferrassie skeletons was, 

 however, but 50 cm. (19 ins.) deep. Could the inhabitants of the 

 shelter have buried the bodies in such a thin deposit ? 



There are several possible explanations. The deposits, before be- 

 coming as packed down as they eventually did. were doubtless con- 

 siderably thicker. Such packing is well known to prehistorians in 

 other cases. A portion of the deposits may have been removed by 

 wind, water, or sweepings. Or, the bodies were introduced later, per- 

 haps during the lower Aurignacian occupation. The incised bone 

 would seem to lend some support to this supposition. This thought, 

 of course, meets opposition in the common belief that all the Neander- 

 thalers disappeared l)efore the Aurignacians. Yet next to nothing is 

 known as to the physical type of the earliest Aurignacians. It is not 

 impossible that, when better known, not a few of them may be found 

 to resemble more or less closely their IMousterian or Neanderthal 

 predecessors — perhaps ancestors. Such thoughts are of course quite 

 heretical. 



THE LA QUINA REMAINS 



On October 16, 191 1, Dr. Menri Martin, well-known physician 

 and prehistorian of Paris, reported to the Academic des Sciences of 

 Paris the find of a very remarkable ancient human skeleton at La 

 Quina, Department of Charente, in France.' " We have discovered," 

 he says, " on the i8th of September, at La Quina. a human skeleton of 

 the Neanderthal type." It lay in a horizontal position, in clayey sand, 

 at the distance of 4.5 m. from the base of a cliff. The deposits in 

 which it rested represent the ancient muddy bed of the near-by 

 stream \'oultron, and belong, archeologically, to the lower Mousterian 

 epoch. The clayey sand was covered by debris from the cliff portion, 

 which in former times extended shelflike over the stream. 



* Martin, Henri, Sur un squelette humain de I'epoque moustericnne trouve en 

 Charente. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris, Vol. 153, p. 728, 191 1. 



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