472 EARLY MAN 



to mere flint flakes, in the absence of other remains ; but the 

 other indications above referred to are indisputable,~and when 

 proper precautions are taken to notice the succession of beds, 

 and to eliminate the effects of any later disturbance of the de- 

 posits, human fossils become as instructive and indisputable as 

 any others. 



When the whole of the facts thus available are put together, 

 we find that the earliest men of whom we have osseous remains, 

 and who, undoubtedly, inhabited Europe and Western Asia in 

 the second continental period, before the establishment of the 

 present geography, and before the disappearance of the mam- 

 moth and its companions, were of two races or subraces, agree- 

 ing in certain respects, differing in others. Both have long or 

 dolichocephalic heads, and seem to have been men of great 

 strength and muscular energy, with somewhat coarse counte- 

 nances of Mongolian type, and they seem to have been of 

 roving habits, living as hunters and fishermen in a semi-barbar- 

 ous condition, but showing some artistic skill and taste in their 

 carvings on bone and other ornaments. 



The earliest of the two races locally, though, on the whole, 

 they were contemporaneous, is that known as the Cannstadt or 

 Neanderthal people, who are characterized by a low forehead, 

 with beetling brows, massive limb bones and moderate stature. 

 So far as known they were the ruder and less artistic of the two 

 races. The other, the Engis or Cromagnon race, was of higher 

 type, with well-formed and capacious skull, and a countenance 

 which, if somewhat broad, with high cheek bones, eyes length- 

 ened laterally, and heavy lower jaw, must have been of some- 

 what grand and impressive features. These men are of great 

 stature, some examples being seven feet in height, and with 

 massive bones, having strong muscular impressions. The Engis 

 skull found in a cave in Belgium, with bones of the mammoth, 

 the skeletons of the Cromagnon cave in the valley of the Vezere, 

 in France, and those of the caves of Mentone, in Italy, repre- 



