THE PALANTHROPIC AGE 45 



Kelb, north of Beyrout At this place, in old caverns 

 partly cut away in the forming of the Roman road 

 round the cliff, there is a hard stalagmite, or modern 

 limestone, produced by the calcareous drippings from 

 the rock. This is filled with broken bones inter- 

 mixed with flint flakes suitable for use as knives or 

 spears or darts, and occasional fragments of charcoal. 

 The bones are those of large animals, and have been 

 broken for the extraction of the marrow ; and the 

 whole is evidently the remnants of the cuisine of 

 some primitive tribe of hunters, now cemented into 

 a somewhat hard stone by stalagmitic matter. The 

 bones are not those of the present animals of Syria, 

 but principally of an extinct species of rhinoceros 

 (R. tichorhinus), a species of bison, and other large 

 mammals which inhabited the region in the pleistocene 

 and post-glacial periods. It is farther known that 

 these animals had been extinct long before the early 

 Phoenicians penetrated into this country, perhaps 

 3000 B.C., and that the deposits existed in their 

 present state when the early Egyptian conquerors 

 passed this way, at least 1 500 B.C., on their march 

 to encounter the Hittites. It is also known that 

 the earliest historic aborigines of the Lebanon, cer- 

 tain rude tribes which seem to have existed there 

 before the migration of the Phoenicians, subsisted on 

 the modern animals of the district, and used flint 

 implements and weapons somewhat differing from 

 those of the earlier cave men of the region. 1 What, 



1 See the illustration on p. 97. 



