120 BELIQUI^E AQUITANIC^E. 



IV. CONCLUSION. 



A general view of the different features and peculiarities that we have ahove 

 described presents a remarkable union of characters of superiority and of infe- 

 riority in the Cro-Magnon race. The great volume of the brain, the development 

 of the frontal region, the fine elliptical profile of the anterior portion of the 

 skull, and the orthognathism of the upper facial region (giving a considerable 

 openness to Camper's facial angle), are incontestable characters of superiority, 

 which are met with usually only in the civilized races. On the other hand, the 

 great breadth of face, the alveolar prognathism, the enormous development of the 

 ascending ramus of the lower jaw, the extent and roughness of the muscular in- 

 sertions, especially for the masticatory muscles, give rise to the idea of a violent 

 and brutal race, especially when we are nearly certain that the Woman was killed 

 with the blow of an axe and that the Old Man bore on his femur traces of an old 

 and severe wound. We may note, too, the simplicity of the sutures and their 

 probably precocious closure, proceeding from before backwards, as in savages. 

 We may add that the athletic conformation of the bones, and particularly the 

 extraordinary prominence of the linea aspera of the femur, bears witness to the 

 great development of muscular power. Lastly we may refer to three characters 

 (the excessive breadth of the ascending ramus, the subcoronoidal curve of the ulna, 

 with its very shallow coronoid cavity, and, above all, the flattening of the tibias) as 

 being more or less manifestly Simian ; and we shall thus complete the picture of 

 a race which in some of its features attained the highest and noblest stages in 

 human morphology, and in other traits descended below even the lowest of the 

 anthropologic types at present existing. 



The antithesis seems, at first sight, paradoxical ; and nevertheless is it not the 

 anatomical confirmation of what the discoveries of Henry Christy and Edouard 

 Lartet have already taught us as to the life and manners of the Cave-dwellers of 

 Perigord ? The men who in the Quaternary Period were the initiators of progress 

 and the precursors of civilization, they whose were the remarkable works of 

 industry and art which we wonder at to-day, necessarily combined with the 

 intelligence of the inventor and workman the physical force and habits of war 

 and the chase which alone at that time could assure subsistence and security. 

 At the present day, with our powerful metals, our terrible arms, and our country 

 long since cleared with all the resources furnished by agriculture and commerce, 

 we can live peaceably the life of civilization ; but when immense forests, which 

 the axe of stone could not fell, covered the greater part of the soil, and, instead of 

 agriculture, hunting only could provide sustenance for Man, when the immediate 



