THE STUDY OF HUMAN PREHISTORY 
subsequent Bronze Age somewhere around 2500 B. c. Just 
beneath this, and therefore next older, was a stratum one 
and one-half feet in thickness, of various colored clays, 
containing objects of early Neolithic date. Lower still 
came the Azilian layer, also about one and one-half feet 
thick, with implements of that transitional period which 
in fact has received its name from this very site. Below 
the Azilian again, a succession of strata, amounting in all 
to seventeen feet, contained various hearths with remains 
of Magdalenian type, including a thick barren layer which 
showed that there had been a long interval when the cave 
was unoccupied by man. Bones of reindeer and other 
arctic animals, some of the latter belonging to extinct 
species, were found in the lower deposits, but not in the 
Azilian. 
Passing over now to Solutré, where M. Arcelin carried 
on excavations from 1866 until his death in 1904, we find 
a site of another kind. It is two and one-half acres in 
extent, sloping upward from the river Sadne toward a 
rocky bluff 300 feet high, and consisting largely of the 
débris left behind by the ancient occupants. In some 
places this great mass of material was found to reach a 
depth of thirty-three feet. Its upper portions contained 
bones of various wild animals, including the mammoth, 
the cave bear, the wild bull, the horse, and especially the 
reindeer; also quantities of tools and weapons of reindeer 
horn, bone, and stone; minerals for colors; carved figures; 
and perforated animal teeth. The weapons included many 
of the so-called “‘laurel-leaf” points of flint, so character- 
istic of the Solutrean culture phase named for this very site. 
Beneath the Solutrean remains and belonging appar- 
ently to the preceding Aurignacian epoch, at a depth of 
about ten feet, occurred a uniform layer of horse bones, 
charred, cut, and broken; mingled with these were flint 
implements. This huge deposit covered an area of well 
Over 4,200 square yards, or more than seven-eighths of 
an acre, and represented the remains of at least 100,000 
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