FOSSIL MAN FROM LA MADELAINE AND LAUGEBIE BASSE. 265 



in which all the sutures are apparent, and the right cheek-hone still adheres to 

 the frontal. The characters of this portion of the face, as well as those of the 

 entire cranial arch, are incontestably infantile. This skull, therefore, does not 

 possess the value at first assigned to it. Its juvenility masks even the ethnic 

 characters to a great extent. All that we can say of it is that it is plainly 

 dolichocephalous : its antero-posterior diameter equals 172 millims. (677 inches) ; 

 its maximum transverse diameter reaches 126 millims. (4'96 inches); and its 

 cephalic index is 73'25. It will be observed that it has a large Wormian bone 

 above the lambdoidal suture. 



III. 



Individuals of the race of which the skeletons from Cro-Magnon represent the 

 most marked osteological type are met with, in the fossil state, in a considerable 

 number of localities, widely distant from one another : but the principal centre is 

 still the South of France ; and among our southern valleys, that of the V6zere 

 appears, up to the present, to have been the most frequented during the whole 

 of the transition period which unites the age of the Extinct with that of the 

 Retreating Animals. 



Indeed we find again at La Madelaine as at Laugerie, towards the end of that 

 period, the same type as at Cro-Magnon which it is agreed to consider contem- 

 poraneous with " Lower Aurignac," and consequently much more ancient. 



Lartet and Christy, as early as 1864, noticed the presence of Man in the fauna 

 of La Madelaine*. " In the midst of this deposit," they wrote, " and at a certain 

 depth, a fragment of a human skull, a half of a jaw-bone, and several long bones 

 of a tall subject have been found. These human remains were covered by the 

 same medley of bones of animals and chipped flints of which this bed is uniformly 

 constituted throughout." Their state of preservation was identical with that of 

 the bones of Reindeer and other mammals. Not finding, however, what they 

 regarded as the result of inhumation in the very place which had served for the 

 meals of the Reindeer-hunters, and, on the other hand, not perceiving around 

 the human bones the usual accessories of sepulture of primordial times, the two 

 authors showed extreme reserve as to the date of the skeleton of La Madelaine 

 whilst this remained an isolated discovery. 



* Ed. Lartet et H. Christy, " Sur des figures d'animaux gravees ou sculpte'es et autres produits d'art et 

 d'industrie rapportables aux temps primordiaux de la periode humaine," Eevue Archeologique, April 1864 ; 

 and < L'homme fossile en France ' (Paris : J. B. BaiUiere. 1864, 8vo), p. 135 et seq. 



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