108 FOSSIL MEN. 



actually found buried with the dead, and the others 

 mixed with the debris of cookery. The remains of 

 the horse are in such abundance, and the whole 

 skeleton is so often present, that it is inferred that 

 they were not killed in hunting like the other animals, 

 but that they mnst have been driven over the face of 

 the precipice behind the village in battues, or lassoed 

 and led home as captives,* or that they were actually 

 kept in herds as domesticated animals, and slaughtered 

 for food, as amongst the Tartar Khirgis at present. 

 The great depth of the beds of debris at Soloutre, and 

 their stratification in layers, indicate a long term of 

 residence, and it would seem that the remains of the 

 mammoth and other extinct animals extend through- 

 out the whole, and that only implements of stone and 

 bone occur, except in the mere surface soil. 



If, as seems most probable, this remarkable deposit 

 at Soloutre indicates a truly Palaeocosmic t village, 

 it is probably the only instance of this kind extant ; 

 and it destroys utterly the pretension that the men of 

 the Mammoth age were an inferior race or ruder than 

 their successors in the later Stone age. Further, the 

 condition of the objects found carries with it no evi- 

 dence of that extreme antiquity often claimed for the 

 earlier Stone age, and its relations to neighbouring 

 river deposits do not indicate, according to some of 



* It would seem, however, that this would necessitate that 

 the captors should be horsemen. 



f This term was proposed as a substitute for Paleolithic in 

 a previous publication of the author. 



