236 



EARLY MAN IN BRITAIN. 



[CHAP. vn. 



dog was devouring the body as he passed," and, in a 

 second and worse case, of the body being attacked by 

 dogs, the friends did not hesitate to laugh as they heard 

 or told the story. 1 This total want of reverence for the 

 dead is exhibited, so far as I know, by no other people 

 of the present time, and it is therefore not a little re- 

 markable to find the traces of a similar insensibility 

 among the Cave-men. 



An appeal to the implements and weapons proves 

 that the manner of life of the Cave-men was the same 

 as that of the Eskimos. The scrapers 

 made of stone for the preparation of 

 skins are of exactly the same pat- 

 tern in both (Fig. 89). The original 

 of the above figure has its handle 

 made of mammoth ivory, with which 

 the Eskimos are very well acquainted, 

 and which they use for making various 

 articles, as we have seen the Cave- 

 men employed it, who hunted the 

 animal in Auvergne. It is very pos- 

 sible that this habit of the Eskimos 

 may have been handed down from 

 the late Pleistocene times. Their 

 supply is obtained from the fossil 

 tusks preserved from decay by the 

 intense cold of the Arctic regions. 

 The sewing-needles also are of the 

 same pattern in both, and, as Pro- 

 fessor Ed. Lartet has pointed out, the 

 same tendons in the reindeer's feet 

 were used for thread for sewing skins together among 



1 Second Voyage, 4to, pp. 393, 396. 



Fia. 89. 



Eskimo Scraper. 



