410 MAMMALIA. 



the roof of a similar skull (fig. 228) having been found asso- 

 ciated with other fragmentary remains so long ago as 1857, in 

 a cavern in the Neanderthal between Dlisseldorf and Elberfeld, 

 Germany. 



So far as can be determined from implements, man appears 

 to have passed through three successive grades of civilization 

 in western Europe before Britain became separated from the 

 mainland. The earliest stones regarded with much plausibility 

 as bearing traces of human handiwork, occur in certain high- 

 level or plateau gravels in the south of England, which seem to 

 date back to the Pliocene period before the existing valleys 

 were excavated. These are flints merely chipped round the 

 edge to render them more serviceable as implements. They 

 are described as eoliths made by Plateau Man. The next 

 implements, now universally recognized as such, are met with 

 in the older gravels deposited in the existing valleys, and some- 

 times in the lowest layers in the floor-deposits of caverns (as in 

 Kent's Cavern, Torquay). These are completely chipped and 

 fashioned into the form of hatchets and scrapers, to be held by 

 the thickest end. They are the earliest known palceoliths and 

 the handiwork of River Drift Man. More delicate and highly 

 finished flint and chert implements, sometimes associated with 

 harpoons, pins, and needles of bone, occur in many caverns 

 which were evidently inhabited by man when the mammoth, 

 reindeer, lion and other large quadrupeds still survived in 

 Britain. These are ascribed to the highest and latest type of 

 Palaeolithic hunter, commonly known as the Cave Man. It was 

 this type of man that lived during the so-called " Reindeer 

 Period" in the south of France and Switzerland and left the 

 familiar rude sketches of animals and hunting scenes on frag- 

 ments of bone and teeth, which have often been described. It 

 is also to this race of man that the Neanderthal and Spy 

 skeletons must be referred. 



