PREHISTORIC MAN 



was drawn to these flint instruments found in 

 the gravel of the river Somme by a French 

 antiquarian, M. Boucher de Perthes. He got 

 immense quantities of these worked flints from 

 the neighbourhood of Abbeville and Amiens, 

 and he maintained they were the work of men. 

 They were clearly, from the depth of gravel 

 under which they were found, of enormous 

 antiquity. The matter was gone into carefully 

 at the time ; geologists and naturalists took 

 keen interest in it, and the great antiquity of 

 man in Europe was established. And besides 

 these implements in the gravel others have 

 been found in caves associated, as in the gravel, 

 with the remains of animals which have long 

 ceased to exist in this part of the world. These 

 are such mammals as the reindeer, the hairy 

 rhinoceros, the great Irish stag, the cave bear, 

 the cave hyena and the lion. Huge wild 

 cattle, such as the Aurochs or Urus of Caesar, 

 and the Bison, existed then in quantity. In 

 some places the actual bones and skulls of these 

 primitive men have been found with the bones 

 of extinct animals. 



The skulls of primitive men and of modern 

 men show a certain difference in shape. If we 



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