THE REMAINS OF CITIES OF THE STONE AGE. 107 



greater antiquity than the Swiss lake- villages, and 

 which may be a veritable " Palaeolithic " antediluvian 

 town. It occurs at Soloutre, near Macon, in eastern 

 France, and has given rise to much discussion and 

 controversy. As described by Messrs. De Ferry and 

 Arcelin, the site is a mound or hillock near a steep 

 rock or precipice. Judging from the great number 

 of hearths and heaps of refuse, it was obviously a place 

 of residence, and it was also a place of sepulture ; and 

 there is some reason to believe, from the distribution 

 of the materials, that it may have been enclosed, per- 

 haps by a palisade. The dead, mostly very aged 

 people and children, are buried in an extended position, 

 and always apparently in such relation to the hearths 

 or fire-places as to show that they were interred under 

 or over them. Either, therefore, these people, like 

 the Greenlanders, some South American tribes, and 

 Australians, buried their dead under their domestic 

 hearths, or like the ancient Canadians they built 

 funeral fires and held feasts for the dead over their 

 remains. But the most remarkable thing about this 

 village site is its relative antiquity, as indicated by 

 the animal remains found in it, which belong to that 

 Post-glacial time in which the land animals of Europe 

 were very different from those at present inhabiting 

 it. It would seem that these include the wild horse, 

 of which enormous numbers occur, the mammoth, the 

 cave-lion, the cave-bear, the saiga,* the cave-hygena, 

 the wapiti, etc. Bones of some of these animals are 

 * An antelope still extant in Eastern Europe. 



