THE EARLIEST MEN 181 



they cannot be earlier. And so with the various 

 kinds of stone implements, when they are found 

 with the remains of the dead, they are of great 

 assistance in enabling us to say at what stage of the 

 world's history he lived. 



But there is a further point of perhaps even 

 greater interest in connection with these " grave- 

 goods," and it is this. All over the world, and at all 

 stages of the world's history with which we are 

 acquainted, these " grave-goods " have one signifi- 

 cance and one only, and it would be illogical and 

 absurd to deny that the same significance does not 

 attach to them in the period before history began. 

 These offerings were placed with the dead body, 

 because it was believed that the man did not all 

 die, but that something of him remained which 

 went to live in some other existence perhaps 

 very similar to that enjoyed by the dead man when 

 on earth in which he would need the implements 

 which were placed by his dead body. Hence wher- 

 ever these " grave-goods " are found, we may 

 conclude that those who placed them there be- 

 lieved in the existence of what we call the ." soul " 

 we do not know how they spoke of it or thought 

 of it of the man himself, as apart from his body, 

 in some other world invisible to his fellows. To 

 dispose of this part of the matter at once it may 

 here be said that the earliest race of whose burials 

 we have any knowledge as will appear at a 

 later stage is that known as the Mousterian. 

 A complete account of an interment of this 

 period in a cave known as La Chapelle aux 

 Saints^in the Dordogne district, was given by 



