THE STATURE OF MAN AT VARIOUS EPOCHS. 529 



Scandinavians or tlic Scotch. But there arc many ivasons for sup- 

 posing that the man of Mentone ranked in the series of tall-l>odicd 

 persons among the men of his own race. 



In examining si^ecimens of races inferior in stature to the French 

 we find the man of Bolwillier measuring l.(JO meters; the skeleton in 

 the sepulchral Caverne de THomme Mort in the department of 

 Lozere, l.(')2 meters; that in the cave of Gemenos, l.Cu meters; in 

 the cave of the valley of the Rousson, in the department of (lard, 1.03 

 meters. The man of the cave of Orrouy, in the department of Oise, 

 represented a vigorous race and Avas 1.04 meters tall. 



It Avould be irksome to prolong the enumeration. All the caves 

 and caverns that have delivered up their human hones to the curios- 

 ity of anthropologists, the contents of all the sepulchral crypts, all 

 prehistoric burial places, the dolmens of Belgium, of Quiberon, those 

 in the departments of Lozere and Indre, the sepulchral vaults of a 

 dolmenic character, like those of Crecy en-Vexin, the covered alleys 

 like that of Mureaux, the peat districts of the department of Somme, 

 and the dolmens of Algeria — the contents of all these have been 

 examined and the bones found in them measured. The measure- 

 ments made of more than 400 subjects (to be exact, 429) give us a 

 more correct idea than we previously had of the stature of our ances- 

 tors in the neolithic ])eriod, and we are able to say with certainty 

 that they were perceptibly shorter than the Frenchmen of to-day, 

 their average height being 1.G45 metersj that of the French, 1.G50 

 meters. Therefore it is not true that we have undergone an evolu- 

 tionary process of degeneration. It would be false to state that 

 primitive man was our superior in stature. 



Anthropological investigations bearing upon historic times scarcely 

 offer anything more of interest to us, for one can tell in advance that 

 measurements of the body would not furnish different results from 

 those already set forth, since the stature of men of our race, which 

 did not vary in the course of thousands of centuries during a period 

 of extraordinary changes, would certainly not undergo percei)til)le 

 variation in the course of a few hundred years during which condi- 

 tions of existence have sustained but insignificant changes in com- 

 parison with those of preceding periods. Such, in fact, is the very 

 conclusion to be drawn from the examinations made by Rahon and 

 Manouvrier of the bones of human beings in various epochs of the 

 historic period. In the first group they place the bones that may 

 be called proto-historic, since they belong to a time the date of which 

 has not been exactly fixed and of which no records renuiin. P'or 

 example, in the museum of natural history (Paris) there is a collec- 

 tion of bones gotten together by M. de JNIorgan from the dolmens of 

 the Caucasus near Koban and belonging to men who lived at an 

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