WHOLE VOL. SKELETAL REMAINS OF EARLY MAN HRDLICKA 33 1 



Housing. — There is a prevalent idea that Neanderthal man was 

 essentially a cave-dweller, and this idea seems generally to carry 

 with it a sense of inferiority. The records now availahle throw 

 a different light on this matter. Analysis of 360 hetter-known 

 paleolithic sites in Europe and the neighboring regions (from records 

 compiled principally by MacCurdy) ' gives the following interesting 

 information : 



DWELLINGS IN THE OPEN AND IN CAVES DURING PALEOLITHIC 



TIMES 



Period 



Sites in the Open 



Rock-Shelter or Cave 



Pre-Chellean 



Chellean 



Acheulian 



Mousterian 



Aurignacian 



Solutrean 



Magdalenian 



Azilian and Tardenoisian 

 Accompanying Neolithic. 



Number 

 recorded 



II 



32 

 36 

 45 

 24 

 10 



17 



4 



22 



Per cent 

 100 



94 



78 



34 

 18 



14 

 10 



9 5 



22.'; 



Number 

 recorded 



2 

 10 



112 

 62 



148 

 38 

 76 



Per cent. 



6 

 22 



66 



82 



86 

 90 



90-5 

 77-5 



The figures and chart (fig. 38) show some curious and important 

 facts. Man begins as a dweller in the open, but already since the 

 warm Chellean period he commences also to utilize rock-shelters and 

 caverns, and then, as the climate cools, he gradually takes more and 

 more to the caves. In these phenomena the Mousterian period shows 

 nothing striking, nothing individual. It falls harmoniously into the 

 curve of the progress of cave-dwelling, to be followed equally har- 

 moniously by the Aurignacian and the succeeding periods. Mousterian 

 man occasions no perceptible disturbance in the human housing con- 

 ditions of the time, and what is even more remarkable, no disturbance 

 or change whatsoever is found to be occasioned, by the advent of the 

 Aurignacian. Aurignacian man follows in the footsteps of his prede- 

 cessor without a marked interruption. Like the Neanderthaler, he 

 builds, in the open, huts of perishable materials that leave no trace, 

 and he utilizes the caves exactly as much as, and eventually even more 

 than the Neanderthal man. He continues, in fact, on many of the 

 same sites and in most of the same caves that the latter has used, 

 without introducing any detectable innovation. He, also, like the 

 Neanderthal man, leaves here and there a whole series of occupational 



* Human Origins, Vols, i and 2, 1924. 



