246 



NATURE 



{July d,, 1878 



more than the latter from the Egyptians ? The civilisa- 

 tion of Egypt throws about as much light upon the 

 barbarism of the palaeolithic age as that does upon the 

 civilisation of Egypt. 



The author has taken great pains to break down the 

 archaeological classification by the trite argument that 

 bronze, iron, and stone have been very frequently found 

 together in various parts of Europe. We suppose that 

 no modern archasologist has disputed the fact. Dr. John 

 Evans holds that they shade off into one another like the 

 prismatic colours of a rainbow, Dr. Keller and Mr. Lee? 

 his able translator, give numerous examples from the 

 pile dwellings of Switzerland, and other places, of the 

 association of implements composed of these materials. 

 This association, however, has nothing to do with the 

 question as to whether the archaeological classification is 

 correct. The conclusion of the Scandinavian and Swiss 

 archaeologists, that the use of stone, bronze, and iron 

 characterises three distinct phases in the civilisation of 

 mankind in Europe, has been amply confirmed by the 

 numerous discoveries made during the last five-and- 

 Iwenty years. They are merely the outward marks of 

 new stages of culture. 



Nor has the subdivision of the stone age into 

 palaeolithic and neolithic, by Sir John Lubbock, been 

 shaken ; they are separated from one another by the 

 greatest changes in climate and geography, and in 

 animal life, which have taken place since the arrival of 

 man in Europe. Our author, however, denies this, and 

 brings forward a series of examples derived, for the most 

 part, from accounts either unverified by subsequent 

 observers or in themselves equivocal, to show that the 

 palaeolithic men possessed domestic . horses, oxen, pigs, 

 dogs, and "hens," and were acquainted with the art of 

 making pottery. We have no space to examine each of 

 these statements in detail. We would merely say that 

 the scientific exploration of caverns and tombs is by no 

 means easy, and that until comparatively recently every- 

 thing of unknown date found in them was supposed to 

 belong to about the same age. Hence it is that the 

 literature of archaeology offers to the author the exam- 

 ples which he gives us. 



With regard to pottery it must be remarked that 

 the vessels assigned to a palseolithic age, such as 

 that of the Trou de Frontal, belong to well-known 

 neolithic types, and that the domestic animals assigned 

 to the same age are identical with those of the 

 neolithic farmers and herdsmen. Caves were used by 

 the neolithic peoples for purposes of habitation and 

 burial. The duty, therefore, of proving that these things 

 are of palseolithic age rests with the author ; — it is not 

 the business of a reviewer to undertake proof of a nega- 

 tive that they are not. The assertion, however, that no 

 neolithic implements have been met with in the same 

 cave as the so-called "fossil man of Mentone," whom 

 we have always believed to belong to that age, is 

 negatived by the polished celt from that cave which 

 we have seen in the museum at St. Germains — an 

 important fact, which, strangely enough, has escaped 

 the notice of all who have hitherto written on the 

 subject. 



We shall not repeat the arguments in favour of 

 the palaeolithic age of the interments at Solutrd, 



which have already been combated in this review. 

 We have always held that they are not earlier than 

 Gallo-Roman times. The results of the further re- 

 searches of MM. Ducrost and Arcehn, in 1875-6, show 

 that, above the strata containing the remains of mam- 

 moth, reindeer, horses, and palaeolithic implements, there 

 is a stratum containing polished stone axes, iron and 

 bronze implements, and interments of the neolithic, 

 Gallo-Roman Burgundian times. The so-called palaeo- 

 lithic are in all probability referable to one of these 

 three ages, and from the fact of the skeletons resting at 

 full length to one or other of the two last periods. 



The author is not content with bridging over the 

 interval between the neolithic and palaeolithic times 

 by the asserted occurrence in the latter of charac- 

 teristics hitherto to be considered peculiar to the 

 former. He tells us that 'extinct pleistocene animals 

 lived "some of them down to historic and even 

 post-Roman times." In support of this view he 

 brings forward the occurrence of the mammoth from 

 the peat bogs of Holyhead, Torquay, and Colchester, 

 just as if there were no peat bogs in the pleistocene 

 times — as, for example, the pre-glacial forest-bed, with 

 mammoth and other creatures, on the shores of Norfolk 

 and Suffolk. He relies also upon the fresh condition of 

 the carcases of the Siberian mammoth as evidence 

 against high antiquity, just as if ice would not pre- 

 serve anything imbedded in it for an indefinite length 

 of time. 



Palaeontologists will be astonished to hear that the cave- 

 bear has been met with in the peat bogs of Denmark, 

 and in Italy in association with relics of the neolithic age. 

 The first of these reputed occurrences has been given up 

 by M. Nilsson, and the second has not been verified by 

 any competent authority. The latter observation will also 

 hold good regarding the reputed occurrence of the cave 

 lion in the peat of Holdemess. The Irish elk is asserted 

 by our author to have been living in the marshes of 

 Europe as late as the fourteenth century, a statement 

 based on a speculation of Brandt's that the Machlis of 

 Pliny and the Schelch of the Niebelungen Lied are 

 identical with that animal. The palaeolithic imple- 

 ments themselves (p. 220) are traced to the stone axe 

 from Babylon, preserved in the British Museum, of a 

 "palaeolithic type which reappeared in Europe when 

 some of the ruder Turanian tribes migrated in that 

 direction." 



It is not profitable to pursue this review further, for in 

 this work one printed statement is treated as if it 

 were of equal value with another, without any attempt 

 being made to sift the improbable from the probable, or 

 the true from the false. The facts are brought together in 

 it very much hke flies — if one may indulge in a comparison 

 — on a fly-paper, and bear the same relation to each 

 other as the heterogeneous collection of dead and dying 

 winged creatures there brought together in a strange 

 fellowship. We regret that the writer should have 

 spent so much time as he evidently has spent in 

 collecting matter for a book written without scientific 

 method, and which certainly does not prove that the 

 age of the mammoth is removed from the present time 

 by an interval of from six to ten thousand years. 



W. B. D. 



