ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN EUROPE—MACCURDY. 561 
If further evidence were needed to establish the authenticity of 
paleolithic mural decorations, one need only cite the cavern of Pair- 
non-Pair where rude deeply incised engravings were revealed on 
the walls only after the floor deposits of upper Aurignacian age that 
covered them had been removed. ‘The engravings, therefore, are not 
only authentic, but dated as well. The same sort of evidence was 
furnished at La Gréze. There the parietal engravings were covered 
by floor deposits of Solutréan age. 
The excellent preservation of these parietal works of art is due 
in many cases to the accidental sealing up of the caverns toward the 
close of the Quaternary. This was the case not only at Altamira, 
Fic. 12.—Bison engraved on two fragments of stalagmite that were found some distance 
apart in the lower layer of the floor deposits at the cavern of La Mairie, Teyjat. After 
Breuil, Rev. de l’Ecole d’anthr, de Paris, vol. 18, p. 172, 1908. 
but also at Marsoulas (Haute-Garonne) and Teyjat. That frescoes 
and engravings are not found on the walls near entrances that were 
never sealed, but do occur at safe distances from the cavern mouths, 
is at least negative proof of their antiquity. For the first 60 meters 
at Font-de-Gaume, one finds no mural art (see fig. 7), and the 
anterior barren stretch is still greater at Les Combarelles, La 
Mouthe, and Niaux. 
Judged by its parietal art, the cavern of Marsoulas (Haute-Ga- 
ronne) is a connecting link between Altamira and the Périgord, 
Gironde, and Gard group of caverns. Marsoulas had been explored 
from 1880 to 1884 by the Abbé Cau-Durban, who discovered Solu- 
tréan and Magdalenian hearths in its floor deposits. At that time 
he saw certain red outlines on the walls, but supposing they could 
not date from paleolithic times he did not mention them. The dis- 
