30 EARLY MAN IN DORSET. 



long headed. His cranial capacity shows a distinctly human 

 I >rnin, though not of the highest order. The cranial capacity 

 of modern Europeans averages 1,500 cubic centimetres, of 

 Australian Bushmen it is 900, of the gorilla 500, but the 

 highest specimens of the lower classes overlap the lowest of 

 the class above. 



Very Early Man is sometimes called the " River Drift 

 Man," because his flint implements are found in the high 

 level plateau gravels left by rivers which then flowed at a 

 level several hundred feet higher than their present channels, 

 thus indicating enormous denudation before the valleys 

 were scooped out as they are now. Somewhat later he is 

 known as the " Cave Man," because his remains are found in 

 the lower levels of the caves where he found shelter. Here, 

 again, is evidence of very great lapse of time, for these 

 paleolithic remains in caves are covered over with many feet 

 thickness of stalagmite which must have taken millenniums 

 to accumulate, and with other beds which in turn contain 

 the traces of later stages of human progress. 



How did this very Early Man live ? Evidently by hunting. 

 There was a struggle for existence, man trying to escape 

 being eaten, and in one way or another finding enough to 

 eat. During the later Tertiaries, animals w r ere beginning 

 to be much the same as they are found now in various parts 

 of the world. For instance, the elephant was here in the 

 pliocene period, but with the cold of the pleistocene it was 

 replaced by the mammoth or hairy elephant, lately extinct, 

 but occasionally found frozen in Siberia. Of the co- 

 existence of man and mammoth we have interesting 

 evidence, viz., pieces of ivory on which man has engraved 

 a likeness, and a very good likeness, of the mammoth. 

 Paleolithic man, as represented by some of the races of this 

 period, was an artist, and striking evidence of this is furnished 

 by France. He may have believed that by means of his 

 drawings and carvings he could exercise a magical influence 

 over the animals which he hunted, and, perhaps, by which 

 he was hunted. If so, his work had a utilitarian object, but 



