28 The Primitive Inhabitants 



far as yet discovered, are of the ruder type, simply 

 chipped, not polished. No specimens of their pottery 

 have as yet been found. There is nothing yet to show 

 they knew anything of agriculture. At the same time, 

 their carvings became a lost art. During all the period 

 of the lake dwellings, no imitations of leaves, animals, 

 or other natural objects were attempted before the in- 

 troduction of iron. The attempt, even then, to intro- 

 duce animal shapes into their ornamentation, showed, in 

 that particular, very great inferiority to the cave dwell- 

 ers of Perigord. The men of the fossil time, living 

 in caves, undoubtedly were as rude as some savage 

 tribes now living; but their works and their funeral 

 rites show that infant man, a new comer upon the 

 world, dwelling among mammoths and gigantic elks, 

 from the beginning asserted his supremacy over other 

 created beings, and showed himself endowed with intel- 

 ligence, aspiration for art, and belief in his immor- 

 tality. 



But I am checked in calling this the beginning of 

 man. Certain bones have been lately picked up in 

 Southern France. These bones have scratches upon 

 them. They are the bones of the tropical elephant. 

 The scratches are said to be marks made by a sharp 

 quartz implement in scraping off the meat. Hence it 

 has been intimated that the primitive inhabitants of 

 Western Europe may have been cotemporary with the 

 tropical elephant. This suggestion carries us back to 

 an epoch as remote to the time that we have been con- 

 sidering, as that is to the present day. But the sugges- 

 tion that man lived then, is based on no discovery of 

 remains of a degraded human type, or of skeleton in- 



