THE MOST ANCIENT MEN 



our own days, and have left none behind them. Except- 

 ing that they used stone axes and knives instead of steel 

 ones, they really led the life of mediaeval country-folk 



But once you pass them in your journey backwards 



once you enter the Pleistocene circle you find that 

 climate, land surface, 

 animals, plants, 

 mode of life are as 

 utterly changed as 

 were you suddenly 

 transferred from the 

 English countryside 

 to Terra del Fuego 

 or to an Eskimo 

 village. The Palaeo- 

 lithic men and their 

 whole surroundings 

 and arts of life have 

 no touch of famili- 

 arity for the modern 

 inhabitants of 

 Europe. 



When we ex- 

 plore this Palaeo- 

 lithic, Pleistocene, or 

 Quaternary epoch 

 the last of the 



bh c 



FIG. 70. Carving on an antler of a group of 

 three red deer and four fishes, remarkable 

 for the attitude and movement of the deer : 

 a, hind legs of front deer, the rest broken 

 away : bf, second deer : c, third deer looking 

 back : d, lozenge marks, supposed to be the 

 artist's signature : 6A, the hind legs of the 

 second deer, wonderfully true to nature in 

 their "hanging" pose. From the cavern of 

 Lorthet, near Lourdes (Hautes Pyrenees), 

 deposit of the Reindeer epoch. The carving 

 runs all round a cylindrical rod of bone 

 (as very many of these carvings do), and is 

 here represented as ' " un-rolled " or "de- 

 veloped," that is to say, laid out flat. The 

 drawing is a little reduced as compared with 

 the actual carving. 



geologists' long 

 series of epochs and 

 deposits we find that it represents by no means a 

 trivial episode in the world's long change. It is true that 

 compared to geologic periods which follow on below 

 it namely, the Pliocene, Miocene, and Eocene of the 

 Tertiary, the Chalk and the vast ages below that white 

 sea-sediment, indicated by the sixty thousand feet of 



