THE FILLING AND AGE OF BONE-CAVES. 7 



Period, when polished stone comes before us together with domestic animals and 

 habits of agriculture quite unknown to the earlier natives. 



This is a striking contrast, involving the supposition of there having been 

 a great lapse of time between these two periods. For, if the rapid change 

 of manners and customs might be explained by the invasion of a people 

 more advanced in civilization, and by the extermination of the conquered, 

 this would not account for the sudden disappearance of a species of animal, 

 the Reindeer for example, of which we do not find any trace, either in the 

 oldest Lake-dwellings of Switzerland, or in the caves of the same age, containing 

 polished stones and remains of domestic animals, or even in the earliest of the 

 Dolmens. 



Infilling of Bone-caves. There was a time when Geologists, at variance as to 

 the manner in which the introduction of Mammalian Remains into Caves has 

 been effected, proposed only two explanations, of very different tendencies. 



Some thought, with Dr. Buckland, that the caverns must have served during a 

 long time for the haunt of great Carnivores, especially Hyaenas, which had 

 successively dragged into them the entire or dismembered carcases of their 

 prey. In certain cases, indeed, the evidence agrees well enough with this hypo- 

 thesis. 



Another opinion, proposed and perseveringly held by Constant Prevost, attri- 

 buted, in very great part, to running and torrential waters the transport and accu- 

 mulation of the cave-bones. 



This second hypothesis is more than probable when it concerns the great 



and instruments made of Reindeer -horn, the finest polish, who engraved and carved these same bones with 

 taste and remarkable art, how can we explain, we say, that they had not divined the art of polishing stones, 

 especially when they knew (we have proofs of it) how to hollow them, pierce them, to cut figures of animals 

 on them, and even to produce on them, by rubbing, intended for other effects, the accident of polish, alone 

 sufficient to reveal to them the process ? Among different peoples of Antiquity there have always been some 

 long-respected traditions, sacred usages, and mystic prohibitions, the origin of which, and their signification, 

 remain unknown to us. Among the Egyptians the use of stone, to the exclusion of metal, was always 

 connected with certain religious and funereal practices. The Biblical precept (Exodus, xx. 25) prohibited, in 

 the building of the primitive altars, the use or contact of metal, as an abomination. In our Western Europe 

 the Menhirs, the Dolmens, the Cromlechs, and other monuments of large stones, the national origin of which 

 is still obscure, attest, by the natural state of the blocks used in them, that their constructors abstained 

 altogether from all auxiliary art, and even from the mere squaring of the stones, while, notwithstanding, 

 they did often associate with them, as consecrated votive offerings, arms, implements, and amulets of 

 perfectly polished stone. 



