70 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



VI. On the Prehistoric Horses of Europe and their Supposed 

 Domestication in Palmolithic Times. By Egbert Munro, 

 M.A., M.D., LL.D. [Plate L] 



(Read 19th February 1902. Appeared also in The Archceological Journal^ 



June 1902.) 



During the earlier stages of man's career on the globe, 

 nomadic families or tribes, in selecting a temporary place of 

 abode, whether a cave, rock-shelter, or hut, would be influ- 

 enced chiefly by the amount of edible materials to be found 

 in the neighbourhood. As, however, fruits and other natural 

 products came to maturity only at particular seasons of the 

 year, their visitations to special localities would be regulated 

 accordingly. For this reason we find primitive races wander- 

 ing from one locality to another, now gathering fruits and 

 seeds, now hunting wild animals, or, as a last resource, 

 feeding on shell-fish and other produce of the sea-shore. 

 But the most successful of all methods for equalising and 

 supplementing their precarious food supplies was the result 

 of that happy thought which led them to cultivate grain, 

 and to rear animals, either for their milk, or to be kept alive 

 till such time as they were required for food. It is not 

 necessary to suppose that the practice of domesticating 

 certain animals was a monopoly of any single race, as its 

 advantages are so manifest that they may have been recog- 

 nised and practised by more than one community independent 

 of each other, just as the llama and alpaca were already in a 

 state of domestication before the discovery of America by 

 Europeans. The onward march of civilisation is only 

 partially affected by changes in the environment, so that it 

 is quite possible for two or more branches of the human 

 family to progress on parallel lines, under reasoning faculties 

 derived from a common origin, and to evolve analogous 

 civilisations, without being influenced by each other's ways 

 and means. On a retrospective glance at the successive 

 civilisations which have flourished in the past, and on the 

 ruins of which modern civilisation has been constructed, 

 there are certain great discoveries, bequeathed to us from 



