EARLY MAN 473 



sent this race. Doubts, it is true, have been entertained as to 

 whether the last mentioned race is really palanthropic ; but the 

 latest facts as to their mode of occurrence and associations 

 seem to render this certain. These men were certainly contem- 

 poraneous with the mammoth, and they disappeared in the 

 cataclysm which closed the earlier anthropic period. Attempts 

 have, however, been made to separate them into groups ac- 

 cording to age, within this period ; ^ and there can be no doubt 

 that both in France and England the lower and older strata 

 of gravels and caves yield ruder and less perfect implements 

 than the higher. Independently, however, of the fact that the 

 very earliest men may have been peaceful gatherers of fruit, and 

 not hunters or warriors, having need of lethal weapons, such 

 facts may rather testify to local improvement in the condition 

 of certain tribes than to any change of race. Such local im- 

 provement v/ould be very likely to occur wherever a new 

 locality was taken possession of by a small and wandering 

 tribe, which, in process of time, might increase in numbers 

 and in wealth, as well as in means of intercourse with other 

 tribes. A similar succession would occur when caves, used 

 at first as temporary places of rendezvous by savage tribes, 

 became afterwards places of residence, or were acquired by 

 conquest on the part of tribes a little more advanced, in the 

 manner in which such changes are constantly taking place in 

 rude communities. 



Yet on facts of this nature have been built extensive generali- 

 zations as to a race of river-drift men, in a low and savage con- 

 dition, replaced, after the lapse of ages, by a people somewhat 

 more advanced in the arts, and specially addicted to a cavern 

 life ; and this conclusion is extended to Europe and Asia, so 

 that in every case where rude flint implements exist in river 

 gravels, evidence is supposed to be found of the earlier of these 

 races. But no physical break separates the two periods ; the 

 * Mortillet, " Pre-historic Men." 



