186 THE RHINOCEROS TICHORHINUS EATEN BY MAN. chap. x. 



over, were wanting, having been eaten off and gnawed after 

 they were broken, the work, according to M. Lartet, of 

 hyenas, the bones and coprolites of which were plentifully 

 mixed with the cinders, and dispersed through the overlying 

 soil d. These beasts of prey are supposed to have prowled 

 about the spot and fed on such relics of the funeral feasts as 

 remained after the retreat of the human visitors, or during 

 the intervals between successive funeral ceremonies which 

 accompanied the interment of the corpses within the sepul- 

 chre. Many of the bones were also streaked, as if the flesh 

 had been scraped off by a flint instrument. 



Among the various proofs that the bones were fresh when 

 brought to the spot, it is i-emarked that those of the herbivora 

 not only bore the marks of having had the marrow extracted 

 and having afterwards been gnawed and in part devoured as 

 if by cai-nivorous beasts, but that they had also been acted 

 upon by fire (and this was especially noticed in one case of a 

 cave-bear's bone), in such a manner as to show that they 

 retained in them at the time all their animal matter. 



Among other quadrujjeds which appear to have been eaten 

 at the funeral feasts, and of which the bones occurred among 

 the ashes, Avere those of a young Rhinoceros tichorhiniis, the 

 bones of which had been split open for the extraction of the 

 marrow, and gnawed by a beast of prey at both extremities. 



Outside of the great slab of stone forming the door, not 

 one human bone occurred; inside of it there were found, 

 mixed Avith loose soil, the remains of as many as seventeen 

 human individuals, besides some works of art and bones of 

 animals. We know nothing of the arrangement of these 

 bones when they were first broken into. M. Lartet infers, 

 from the small height and dimensions of the vault, that the 

 bodies were bent down upon themselves in a squatting atti- 

 tude, a j)Osture known to have been adopted in most of the 

 sepulchres of primitive times; and he has so represented them 



