CRO-MAGNON SKULLS AND BONES. 121 



wants of life necessitated a constant war against wild animals such as the Mam- 

 moth, and when at last the hunting territory, the sole resource of a tribe, had to 

 be continually defended against the encroachments and attacks of neighbouring 

 tribes, men were obliged, under pain of destruction, to accommodate themselves 

 to circumstances and live the violent life of savages. 



The Cave-dwellers of Cro-Magnon were then savages, like all men of their 

 time; and we are not astonished that such conditions of existence have left 

 strong traces in their skeletons. But these barbarians were intelligent and 

 improvable ; and whilst continuing to struggle with Nature and to war against 

 their kind, they knew how to make leisure enough to increase their knowledge, 

 to develope their industry, and, still further, to rise to the culture of the arts. 

 These aptitudes, so precious rare at all epochs, but truly extraordinary in 

 respect to the time they were manifested among these Cave-folk could not have 

 dawned but by favour of a fine cerebral organization, of which we have found the 

 morphological expression in the skulls of the Cro-Magnon race. 



What has become of this remarkable race, appearing to us as a shining point 

 amidst the darkness of the far past ? In cultivating the arts which embellish life 

 and soften manners, did it lose some of the warlike energy which could alone 

 serve to defend it against the fierce aggressions of surrounding barbarism ? Did it 

 succumb, like those who, coming before their hour, disappear, starved by the 

 inclement conditions among which they try to introduce a premature progress ? 

 Or rather, surviving that inevitable struggle in which its civilization perished, 

 did this race escape extermination but to fall into the universal barbarism, and to 

 lose at length, under the isolated or combined influences of crossing, of social 

 change, and of the gradual transformation of the fauna and the climate, the 

 anatomical characters which had formerly distinguished it ? We may hope that 

 future discoveries will furnish new elements for the solution of these important 

 questions ; but at present we can only be sure of one thing that the race of 

 Cro-Magnon was entirely different from all other known races, ancient and 

 modern. 



N OTE . M. Pruner-Bey thinks that he has found among the modern Esthonians the type of 

 the ancient race of Cro-Magnon (see page 89) . To comprehend fully the importance of this 

 proposed relationship, we ought to refer to the discussions that took place, six years since, in the 

 Anthropological Society of Paris on the question of the Prehistoric Races of Europe. Admitting 

 with Retzius that the aborigines were brachycephalic and that dolichocephalism was introduced 

 by the Kelts from Asia, M. Pruner-Bey has rejected all the facts opposed to this doctrine that 

 have been offered to the Society. He has associated with the Keltic race all the dolichocephalic 



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