10 PREHISTORIC FISHING. 



tions, such as Lapps and Finns, are, for the present, merely speculative in char- 

 acter. Their surroundings compelled them to live much in the manner of the 

 Eskimos, but this is no proof that they were Eskimos, as some are inclined to 

 believe.* At any rate, they are regarded as men differing in race from those 

 occupying Europe in the later or neolithic period, to which reference will be 

 made in the sequel. 



I now pass over to a consideration of the piscatorial pursuits carried on by 

 the cave-men of the Vezere and of other districts, treating first of the fish- 

 remains discovered in the caves, then of the implements supposed to have been 

 employed by the troglodytes for obtaining fish, and lastly of the engraved delin- 

 eations of fishes and aquatic mammals rescued from the cave-rubbish. 



Fish-remains. They have occurred abundantly at La Madelaine, in the 

 cave of Les Eyzies, and particularly in the rock-shelter of Bruniquel, situated 

 on the left bank of the river Aveyron, in the Department of Tarn-et-Graronne, 

 and not far from Montauban. In some caves of the Vezere Valley (Le Moustier, 

 Gorge d'Enfer, Cro-Magnon), which are supposed to have been inhabited at an 

 early time, when the reindeer was less numerous than it became afterward, no 

 fish-bones, and hardly any bird-remains, have been found, and these are just the 

 stations in which barbed darts of reindeer-horn were absent. " There was not, 

 therefore," says M. Edouard Lartet, " in the mode of living an absolute conform- 

 ity between the people of these two periods, though inhabiting the same country, 

 and in the neighborhood of the river, rich probably with fish then as now. Could 

 it be that the more ancient people had no good fishing-implements ? Or, per- 

 haps, were they in the habit of eating their fish raw on the banks of the river, 

 whilst their descendants, or successors of a different race, preferred to take their 

 fish to the caves and shelters where they cooked their other articles of food ? 

 Indeed, some modern travelers tell us of existing savages living near the sea and 

 yet ignorant of the means of obtaining fish therefrom as an article of food."f 



Dr. Paul Broca, in speaking of the earlier retreats in the Vezere Valley, 

 expresses himself quite positively on that point. " Man," he says, " hunted then 

 the smaller animals as well as large game, but had not yet learned how to reach 

 the fish."! It does not appear at all probable to me that the more ancient cave- 

 dwellers should have neglected the practice of obtaining fish in some way. The 

 absence of fish-bones in certain caves may be owing to causes which escape our 

 perception at this time. 



* The Eskimos are decidedly dolichocephalous. 



f Lartet (Edouard): Remarks on the Fauna found in the Cave of Cro-Magnon; Reliquiae Aquitanicaa ; I, 

 p. 95. 



J Broca: The Troglodytes or Cave-Dwellers of the Valley of the Vezere; Smithsonian Report for 1872; 

 p. 323. [Translation of an address delivered before the French Association for the Advancement of Science]. 



