I 



Prehistoric and Savage Man 175 



defend himself against wolves and wild boars, but against 

 hysenas, brown and grizzly bears, and enormous lions. In 

 turn he hunted and preyed upon abundant game such as 

 now would be sought in vain even in the teeming plains of 

 South Africa. Besides horses and stags, the Irish elk, bisons 

 and musk oxen, the hippopotamus, two kinds of elephants, 

 and three kinds of rhinoceros, haunted our woods, rivers, and 

 plains. Deeply interesting is the question — What was man 

 in this early stage ? Apparently ignorant of pottery and of 

 spinning. Palaeolithic man was nevertheless thoroughly 

 human. Admitting that he was not even then everywhere 

 or always in the same condition, there is yet no evidence 

 that he was ever or anywhere in a condition below that of 

 savage man to-day, while there is abundant evidence that 

 even then he was often far in advance of many of our exist- 

 ing wild tribes. The Palaeolithic men, known as the cave- 

 dwellers, shot birds with bows and arrows, and stalked or 

 trapped other game, and seem to have practised fishing. 

 Not only did they wear necklaces and, as appears, amulets, 

 but they could sew, and even wore gloves. Their food was 

 roasted, or cooked on hot stones, and if they had not forks, 

 they had at least marrow-spoons. But far more remarkable 

 is their artistic faculty. We owe to it the only authentic 

 representation of the mammoth — or extinct elephant — 

 (scratched by them upon one of its own bones), and many 

 drawings have been most fortunately preserved of other 

 animals and of their mode of hunting, including horse- 

 hunting, that animal seeming to have been known to them 

 merely as game. Not only, too, did they draw freely, but 

 sculpture also existed in an incipient state amongst them. 



When did this race exist ? and do they anywhere survive 

 to-day ? To the first question no satisfactory answer can yet 

 be given in years ; to the second the answer has been given 

 that they probably survive as the Eskimo. 



