FISH DEBRIS- HUNTERS BEFORE FISHERS 25 



original and academic. Here is the sheer beginning, the 

 spontaneous germ of art, the labourings of a savage soul con- 

 trolled by wilful aesthetic emotions." ^ 



This review of the fishing weapons and methods of the 

 races cited — especially of the Eskimos and the Tasmanians, 

 the races closest to the Troglodytes — provides data which 

 make for a plausible conjecture, but none, owing to differing 

 conditions caused by cHmate or custom, which enable a definite 

 decision as to priority of implement. 



Let us return from this survey of races to the cavernes and 

 examine their contents. 2 Their debris (at times ten feet deep 

 and seventy long) manifests that these stations served as 

 habitations for several generations of men. 



From nearly all the French stations neighbouring the sea 

 or rivers, bones of fish, especially of salmon, have been recovered. 

 These have been identified, but not without some dissent, as 

 belonging to the Tunny, Labrax lupus, Eel, Carp, Barbel, 

 Trout, and Esox lucius. 



The presence of the last, our pike, in this (and again in 

 Neolithic) debris excites our interest as evidence that the 

 Troglodytes knew and made use of a fish whose absence, 

 despite its wide geographical distribution, from all Greek and 

 Latin literature until we reach the time of Ausonius, Cuvier, 

 or more strictly Valenciennes, notes with extreme surprise. 3 



While in La Madelaine and elsewhere fish occur abundantly 

 in the debris, at some cavernes in the V6z^re Valley, notably 

 Le Moustier, they cannot be traced. Their absence coupled 

 with the presence of animal bones has led some archaeologists 

 to the conclusion that Le Moustier and other stations were 

 earlier inhabited than La Madelaine, at a time, in fact, when 

 according to Paul Broca, " Man hunted the smaller animals as 



^ E. J. Banfield, Confessions of a Beachcomber, London, 1913. 



- For descriptions of Palaeolithic life, see Worthington G. Smith, Man the 

 Primal Savage, London, 1894, and J. J. Atkinson, Primal Law, London, 1903. 

 For the community assumed by the former, Atkinson substitutes a family 

 group. 



^ Cuvier and Valenciennes, Hist. Nat. des Poissons, vol. xviii. pp. 279-80, 

 Paris. 1846. Since in this volume the geographical distribution of the pike,' 

 as known at the time, is set forth without any mention of Greece, it is rather 

 difficult to understand the surprise of Valenciennes, who wrote the volume in 

 question ; Cuvier died in 1832. 



