MAN FROM THE FARTHEST PAST 
of course, there was no such thing as “keeping out the 
cold,” which was often bitter. Doubtless the Neander- 
thalers accepted as a matter of course hardships which we 
should regard as unbearable; and the inexorable weeding 
out of the weak and unfit, particularly in infancy, must 
have kept the racial capacity for endurance at a very high 
pitch. Nevertheless, some of the known Mousterian 
skeletons show unmistakable signs of very severe arthritis, 
pyorrhea, and other ailments. There are also instances 
in which bones have sloughed away as the result of injury 
or disease. 
Naturally we can infer little regarding the social organ- 
ization of Neanderthal man. He must have had some- 
thing of the sort, however, in order not only to hunt the 
larger aniinals but even to survive at all under the con- 
ditions of hardship, discomfort, and danger which were 
his daily portion. Nor can we expect to know very much 
regarding the nature of his religious beliefs, although it is 
safe to say that he, like so many present-day savages, 
made no distinction between the “natural” and the 
“supernatural.” For everything must have seemed to him 
perfectly natural and at the same time imbued in varying 
degrees with magical potentialities. Strong or ferocious 
animals in particular were undoubtedly thought, in the 
language of our own Great Plains, to be “‘big medicine.” 
In the Drachenloch cavern in Switzerland and at Peters- 
héle in Franconia there have come to light specially ar- 
ranged skulls and other bones of the cave bear, indicating 
the existence of some sort of bear cult. 
Man of the late Acheulian may have practiced burial, 
occasionally at least, but its indications become unmis- 
takable early in the Mousterian. Already we find red 
mineral pigment which may, as in later times, have been 
used in connection with burials. Vestiges of the custom 
exist even today in China. Judging from analogies among 
more modern peoples, the Neanderthalers may have 
reasoned that life was closely associated, if not actually 
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