274 COMMON BRITISH ANIMALS 



domesticated horses. He also considers the Mon- 

 golian horse to be practically identical with the Cave 

 horse. Wonderfully spirited and artistic prehistoric 

 sketches and carvings of this horse on reindeer horn 

 and mammoth ivory have been found in the Cave of 

 La Madelaine in the Dordogne, in the south of France. 

 The Cave horse had the same relatively large head, 

 absence of forelock, erect mane and sparsely haired 

 tail. A large quantity of the remains of horses have 

 been found associated with those of Neolithic man 

 and his weapons — flint knives and flint scrapers. 

 The condition of many of the horse bones suggests 

 that the animals had been cooked and eaten, or used 

 for sacrifice. On counting the bones found in one 

 locality in France, it was estimated that they belonged 

 to at least 80,000 horses. Bones of the horse asso- 

 ciated with human bones have been found in Kent's 

 Cavern at Torquay. 



There was no evidence that primitive man domes- 

 ticated the horse until the late M. Piette discovered 

 in the Cave of St. Michel d'Arudy a prehistoric 

 drawing of a horse's head encircled by what appears 

 to be a rope bridle or nose band. This drawing, 

 with many others discovered by M. Piette, is now 

 in the Museum of St. Germain near Paris. From the 

 existence of these drawings we can no longer doubt 

 that not only was the wild European horse, which 

 is believed to be identical with the Northern or 

 Mongolian wild horse, hunted, killed and eaten by 

 Neolithic man, but he was bridled and tamed by man 

 in Europe at a time when Great Britain and Ireland 

 were still a part of the continent, and the mammoth, 



