CHAP, vi.] CONCLUSIONS AS TO RIVER-DRIFT MAN. 173 



spread over such vast distances in a short space of time 

 by wandering tribes. 



Probably the centre from which these Palaeolithic 

 tribes swarmed off was the plateau of Central Asia, which 

 in subsequent ages was the aboriginal home of the suc- 

 cessive invaders both of Europe and India. We cannot 

 refer them to any branch of the human race now alive, 

 and they are as completely extinct among the peoples of 

 India as among those of Europe. Their relation to the 

 men who lived in the valley of the Thames in the mid 

 Pleistocene age is doubtful. 



The wide area occupied by this priscan population 

 renders it very probable that it was not the same as 

 that whose remains are chiefly met with in caverns in a 

 limited area in Europe, and which can be identified with 

 men now living on the earth, and whose implements are 

 of a higher order. This question will be discussed in 

 the following chapter, in which it will be seen that the 

 Eiver-drift men as well as the Cave-men used caverns for 

 shelter in this country and in France, as is the universal 

 custom among savages of the present day. 



