EARLY MAN 475 



doubt just such a trophy of the chase as would now be worn by 

 a red Indian hunter, though more elaborate, must have belonged 

 to the owner of the skull, who would appear to have perished 

 by a fall of rock, or to have had his body covered after death 

 with stones. In the deposit near and under these remains 

 were flint flakes. Above the skull were several feet of refuse, 

 stones, and bones of the horse, reindeer, etc., and "Paleolithic" 

 flint implements, and above all were placed the remains of 

 thirty skulls and skeletons with beautifully chipped flint imple- 

 ments, some of them as fine as any of later age. After the 

 burial of these the cave seems to have been finally closed with 

 large stones. The French explorers of this cave refer the lower 

 and upper skulls to the same race, that of Cromagnon ; but 

 others consider the upper remains as " Neolithic," though there 

 is no reason why a man who possessed a necklace of beautifully 

 carved teeth should not have belonged to a tribe which used 

 well-made stone implements, or why the weapons buried with 

 the dead should have been no better than the chips and flakes 

 left by the same people in their rubbish heaps. In any case 

 the interment and this applies also to the Mentone caves 

 recalls the habits of American aborigines. In some of these 

 cases we have even deposits of red oxide of iron, representing 

 the war paint of the ancient hunter. 



Widely different opinions have been held by archaeologists 

 as to the connection of the Palanthropic and Neanthropic ages. 

 It suits the present evolutionist and exaggerated uniformitarian- 

 ism of our day to take for granted that the two are continuous, 

 and pass into each other. But there are stubborn facts against 

 this conclusion. Let us take, for example, the area represented 

 by the British Islands and the neighbouring continent. In the 

 earlier period Britain was a part of the mainland, and was occu- 

 pied by the mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, and other 

 animals, now locally or wholly extinct. The human inhabit- 

 ants were' of a large-bodied and coarse race not now found 



s, E. 34 



