ANTIQUITY OP MAN. 225 



itself in the Belgian caves and similar receptacles is 

 encompassed with grave doubt as to its causes. 



Caves of residence and caves of sepulchre are often 

 associated with each other. It is so in those of the 

 Dordogne and in the Mentone cave, and probably also 

 in that of Aurignac. The latter, however, has been 

 lately subjected to so many doubts with reference to 

 its antiquity, that we may for the present leave it out 

 of the account. The caves of the Dordogne and that 

 of Bruniquel, all in the limestone districts of the 

 south of France, indicate very clearly the fact that 

 the ancient tribes which inhabited them hunted the 

 reindeer in a region not inhabited by that animal in 

 historic times, and also in all probability the extinct 

 mammoth; and the testimony of these caves is not 

 complicated with water driftage, except in the case of 

 small deposits of sand due to land floods. The people 

 who inhabited these caves were not abject savages, but 

 well-developed men of what we may call the American 

 type. They were well provided with implements of 

 stone and bone, and were not inferior to some of the 

 American tribes in the art of carving in bone and 

 ivory. They must have inhabited their caves for a 

 long time, and attempts have been made to subdivide 

 the Dordogne cave-dwellers and their relics into dis- 

 tinct ages of great duration. 



I agree with Sir C. Lyell, however, in believing 

 that there is but slender and insufficient ground for 

 this. The facts detailed by Lartet and Christy, and 

 more recently by Mortillet, only imply such differences 



Q 



