ANCIENT REMAINS OF MAN HRDLICKA. 521 



THE SPY SKELETONS. 



In June of 1886 Messrs. Marcel de Puydt, member of the Archaeo- 

 logical Institute of Liege, and Maximin Lohest, at that time assistant 

 of geology of the University of Liege, discovered in the terrace front- 

 ing a certain cave at Spy, in the Province of Namur, Belgium, the 

 remains of two human skeletons associated with the debris of extinct 

 Quaternary animals. The discovery was immediately brought to 

 the attention of Prof. J. Fraipont, of the Liege Universitj^, and on 

 the 16th of August, 1886, he announced the important find to the 

 Congres archeologique of Namur. A little later in the same year 

 Messrs. Fraipont and Lohest published an account of the discovery, 

 with a description of the human remains, in the Bulletins of the 

 Roj^al Academy of Belgium.^ 



According to the last-mentioned account there existed in the 

 eighties in the community of Spy, above the stream Orneau and in 



It. OrH««-»* 



Fig. 4.— The Spy Cave and Terrace. (After Fraipont and Lohest.) 

 X = position of the skeletal remains of the Spy man. 



the side of a wooded mountain, a cave, in which de Puydt and Lohest 

 conducted archaeological explorations since August, 1885 (fig, 4). A 

 large terrace situated in front of the cave had not been methodically 

 examined until 1886, and it Avas during excavations in this terrace 

 that the two investigators encountered, in June of 1886, the human 

 i-emains known since as the Spy skeletons. 



The human bones lay in the lowest parts of the deposits, one 6, 

 the other 8 meters in front of the entrance to the cave. They repre- 

 sented two individuals. One of these lay on its side, the hand touch 

 ing the lower jaw ; in the case of the other the original position could 

 not be determined. 



The terrace containing the Spy skeletons was situated 14.5 meters 

 (47.5 feet) aljove the shallow bed of the stream running at the foot 

 of the mountain, and the bones lay at the depth of 13 feet from 



1 Fraipont, J., and M. Lohest. La race hnmaine de Neanderthal ou de Canstadt en 

 Belgique. Bulletins de IWcademie Royale de Belgiqiie, ?.d series, vol. 12, 1886, pp 

 741-784. 



