ARCHAEOLOGY. 



association either with the remains of man him- 

 self, or with any other relics of his handiwork. 

 In the Valley of the Somme, they are found in a 

 band of gravel lying some 200 feet above the 

 present river-bed. At the time when this gravel 

 was deposited, the river must have flowed at a 

 level of 200 feet above its present bed. Hence 

 the time required for the Somme to excavate 

 its ' valley of erosion ' 200 feet vertically, is the 

 measure of the antiquity of the implements. It 

 has been attempted to calculate the time required ; 

 for the river to make this excavation of its bed, by ' 

 -estimating the present rate of erosion ; but the 

 erosive power of a river is dependent on so many 

 circumstances of torrential action, varying level, 

 and distribution of the volume of water dis- 

 charged from a given drainage area, that all 

 such calculations are illusory. 



Association. On the other hand, the imple- 

 ments undoubtedly occur in true geological as- 

 sociation with remains of the mammoth (Elephas 

 primigenius\ the woolly-haired rhinoceros (Rhin. 

 tichorinus\ the hippopotamus {Hip. major), and 

 other animals now wholly extinct. We have no 

 means of ascertaining the mode, or the period, of 

 the extinction of these great mammals and their 

 co-existing ferce naturce, still less of estimating 

 how long they may have been the contemporaries 

 of man. It has been argued that the presence 

 of the mammoth and the woolly-haired rhinoceros 

 indicates a much colder climate than that now pre- 

 vailing in England ; but, on the same grounds, it 

 might with equal fairness be argued that the pres- 

 ence of the hippopotamus indicates not only a 

 warmer climate, but a much greater body of water 

 in our English rivers, and consequently greater 

 and more rapid erosion. Whatever the climatic 

 conditions of the river-drift period may have been, 

 it is evident that they were not so unfavourable as 

 to prevent an abundance of animal life, or to stint 

 the supply of vegetable food ; while it is equally 

 evident, from the character of the gravels of the 

 different valleys, that the watersheds and the general 

 configuration of the surface were the same as now 

 in other words, that no great geological changes 

 have taken place in these areas since man and 

 the mammoth were their contemporary inhabit- 

 ants. 



Antiquity of Man. In dealing with a ques- 

 tion so unproductive of definite results as ' the 

 antiquity of man,' the attempt to substitute an 

 absolute for a relative chronology is not only 

 futile, but hostile to the best interests of science. 

 In all such speculations there is a strong tendency 

 to state mere theories as if they were ascertained 

 and unchallengeable facts, and to deal with the 

 ' ages ' as if they were periods of time of practically 

 unlimited, because of unknown duration. Thus 

 it becomes possible to speculate regarding the 

 existence of man in the glacial epoch of the 

 geologist, and to deduce a chronology of the 

 human period from the precession of the equi- 

 noxes. But till the glacial drifts themselves yield 

 evidence of the existence of man, either in the 

 shape of his bones or his implements, we may 

 truly say of these rude implements of the river- 

 drifts, that they are the oldest relics of man upon 

 the earth, although we may never be able to say 

 what is their age in years or centuries. In the 

 meantime, we are unable to correlate them with 

 the dwellings or the graves, or indeed with any 



other relics whatsoever of the men who made 

 them ; and, untir the missing links are found 

 which shall connect them with the rest of the 

 prehistoric series, they must stand apart, undeter- 

 mined even as to their relative antiquity, if their 

 analogy with some of the cave types be not held 

 to link them with that series. 



The method most convenient for a general 

 survey of the remains of prehistoric times, neces- 

 sarily brief and rapid, is to divide them into two 

 groups, the one illustrative of the habits and cir- 

 cumstances of life, and the other, of the sepulchral 

 usages characteristic of different periods. The 

 first group will thus include the dwellings and 

 defensive structures ; and the second, the sepul- 

 chral remains of the Stone, Bronze, and Iron 

 periods respectively. 



CAVE-DWELLINGS. 



The earliest habitations of men hitherto dis- 

 covered are subterranean caverns, which the 

 human occupants in some cases appear to have 

 tenanted alternately with the wild beasts. A 

 series of such caverns in the Valley of the Ve*zere, 

 in the department of Dordogne, France, which 

 have been systematically explored and described 

 by Messrs Lartet and Christy, afford the best 

 materials for a brief summary of the facts relating 

 to the early cave-dwellers of the south of France. 



These caves and rock-shelters are grouped 

 within a range of five miles along both banks of 

 the Ve"zere, which flows through a deep and 

 naiTow valley, flanked by precipitous cliffs, hol- 

 lowed into caves and recesses by the unequal 

 weathering and decay of the soft calcareous rock. 

 The principal caves are those of Le Moustier, 

 Gorge d'Enfer, and Les Eyzies. Besides these, 

 there are the rock-shelters of La Madelaine, 

 Lower and Upper Laugerie, and Cro Magnon, 

 which are not caves in the ordinary acceptation 

 of the term, but simple recesses in the face of the 

 cliff. Le Moustier is at an elevation of 90 feet 

 above the river, while some of the others are still 

 within reach of very high floods. 



Contents. In every case, the original floor of 

 the cavern is covered with a deposit of the refuse 

 of the food, the waste of the manufacture of 

 stone implements, and lost or rejected implements 

 themselves, accumulated during a lengthened 

 period of human occupancy. 'These deposits,' 

 say the authors of the magnificent work devoted 

 to their illustration,* 'consist usually of accumu- 

 lations of broken bones ; various-sized pebbles of 

 stone extraneous to the local formation, and col- 

 lected from the river-bed ; nodules of flint from 

 which flakes have been struck ; innumerable frag- 

 ments or chips detached in the first dressings of 

 these cores ; and countless thousands of blades of 

 flint, varying in size from lance-heads long enough 

 and stout enough to have been used against the 

 largest animals, down to lancets no longer than 

 the blade of a penknife, and piercing instruments 

 of the size of the smallest bodkin. These remains 

 are usually intermixed with charcoal in dust and 

 in small fragments, and extend to a depth, in some 

 cases of eight to ten feet, and a length of sixty 

 to seventy teet Besides these, there have been 

 found a multitude of implements formed of bone 



Reliquia AquitaHtt*. By Edouard Lartet and Henry 

 Christy. London, 1865-74, in 410. 



