696 EVOLUTION OF THE HORSE. 



zebras are of an older type than the horse, justifies us in 

 assuming that the common equine ancestor resembled 

 them more closely, than he resembled the horse. The 

 remarks made on page 424 show that our present horses 

 are probably descended from two equine varieties which 

 differed from each other, as regards hind chestnuts, ergots, 

 and loin vertebrae. Structural size does not affect this 

 question, because size depends chiefly on climate and soil, 

 as we have seen in Chapter XXVI. 



Prehistoric Horses. — Cuvier (Recherches sur les 

 ossements fossiles), Sanson (Comptes rendus de I' Academic 

 des Sciences, 1873), Pietrement (Les chevaux dans les 

 temps prehistoriques et historiques), and other distin- 

 guished palaeontologists are agreed that no exact infor- 

 mation has been obtained about the species to which 

 these animals belonged. The fragmentary character of 

 their remains (bones and teeth) and the fact that some 

 of these prehistoric horses were more like asses and 

 zebras than our present horses are, greatly increase the 

 difficulty of this question. 



From fossil remains found in caves of various countries, 

 it appears that wild prehistoric horses roamed in large 

 numbers over Europe and Asia during the Older Stone 

 Age, and furnished food to Palaeolithic men, who were 

 savages that lived by hunting. These people evidently 

 took great delight in eating the marrow and brains of 

 their equine prey ; for the large collections of equine 

 bones in caves of France and Belgium are chiefly made 

 up of the long bones of the limbs and bones of the head ; 

 both having been fractured as a rule by means of flint 

 " knives." The fractured parts of these heads consist 

 almost entirely of bones which covered the brain, and 

 consequently the lower jaws are generally entire, and the 

 upper ones broken in pieces. The nature of the cleaving 

 instruments is shown by the fact that many of these flint 

 " knives " and splinters from them have been found in 



