THE OLD STONE AGE 
they themselves, accustomed to life on the open treeless 
plains, did not care to penetrate. Numerous illustrations 
of a closely similar state of affairs might be drawn from the 
contacts between the Plains Indians and their mountain- 
dwelling neighbors. 
In Solutrean times, also, men evidently revered, or at 
least feared, the spirits of their dead, for among the few 
interments of that period which have thus far come to 
light we find instances of stone coverings protecting bodies, 
which in some cases are specially prepared for burial and 
accompanied by numerous grave-ofterings. One of the 
Brinn skeletons, for example, was colored with red pig- 
ment, as were many of the objects buried with it. These 
included perforated stone disks, ornaments of shell and 
bone and mammoth teeth, and a fragmentary ivory 
statuette, apparently of a man. 
The Solutrean culture is usually considered to have per- 
sisted in Europe for perhaps a couple of thousand years, 
after which it came to an end, somewhat abruptly. The 
total disappearance of the Solutrean technique of flint- 
working suggests the withdrawal of a race rather than the 
decline of a culture. It seems probable that this disap- 
pearance resulted, in the main at least, from a change in 
climate. For there appears to have been an increase in 
humidity toward the close of Solutrean times which in- 
duced the growth of forests. These spread gradually over 
much of the steppe, rendering it impossible for the Solu- 
treans any longer to continue their accustomed methods 
of hunting in western Europe, even had the troops of wild 
horses and other plains-loving animals been able to remain. 
But as the forests slowly crowded out the latter, the 
bands of hunters who depended on them for a livelihood 
seem to have accompanied them farther and farther east- 
ward, back toward the regions whence they had originally 
come. Probably the change in any one man’s lifetime was 
hardly great enough to be noticed; and we must remember 
that in those days man possessed no means of recording 
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