64 Primitive Man. 



partly civilized, in the habitual use of stone implements of 

 the later stone age. It has therefore been properly said 

 that a given kind of implement indicates rather a stage of 

 culture than a classification in time. So regarded, the 

 palaeolithic are characteristic of the earliest man ; these, 

 roughly hcAvn and chipped, betoken an extremely remote 

 age. The specimens consist of axes, lance and arrow heads, 

 knives, scrapers for preparing skins, and hammers, all of 

 the most primitive type, prepared almost exclusively from 

 flint, except where, as in America, jade and obsidian are more 

 readily obtained. These implements abound in great quan- 

 tities, not only in the diluvian, but in the numerous bone caves 

 of various ages, and megalithic tombs, in peat mosses, shell 

 mounds, barrows, crannoges and lake-dwellings. 



It is to the flints discovered in the bone-caves that we 

 owe the second important deduction as to man's antiquity, 

 for here we discover bones of extinct species of animals 

 intermingled with palaeolithic implements. If the imple- 

 ments are found so imbedded wath these remains as to 

 prove contemporaneity in the date of deposit, we have a 

 further satisfactory scientific datum. It is now absolutely 

 known that the principal species of animals existent dur- 

 ing the early Quaternary though now wholly extinct- 

 were the mammoth, the Avoolly rhinoceros, the cave hyena, 

 the cave bear, the cave cat, the cave lion, and the Irish elk. 

 "With the bones of these quaternary fauna, have been founil 

 associated not only flint implements, but human remains as 

 well, under circumstances which preclude any reasonable 

 doubt of the co-existence of man Avith the above enumer- 

 ated species. The announcement of these discoveries was 

 first made in 1828. In 1833 tlie caves, of Belgium were 

 thoroughly explored, and skulls and portions of the human 

 skeleton were found lying not only above, but below, fossil 

 animals. Sir Charles Lyell first opposed the theory, but 

 after a quarter of a century argued in su])port of it; and 

 when, in 1858, upon a thorough examination of the recently 

 opened cave of Brixham, in England, an entire leg of the 

 cave bear was found superimposed upon an incrustation of 

 stalagmite, which itself was found superimposed upon 

 flint instruments, the proof was deemed sufficient for the 

 Royal Society to endorse the pro])osition of the existence 

 of Quaternary man as fully established. 



The bone-caves aboujid in all parts of the globe, among 



