Sir S. H. Howorth — Antiquity of Man. 23 



The human bones, he tells us, were found with pieces of pottery, 

 living marine and land shells, and bones of extinct animals, in the 

 same stratum of red cave earth (Annates des Sciences Naturelles, 

 vol, XV, pp. 348-350). He adds another statement, which he did 

 not, and perhaps could hardly be expected to, appreciate at its full 

 value, that he also found in the cave earth fragments of flint with 

 very sharp angles [" des fragments de silex pyromaque a angles 

 tres-vifs"). 



On the 29th of June, 1829, M. Christol communicated to the 

 Academy a notice of the caverns of Pondres and Souvignargues, near 

 Sommieres, explored by himself and M. Bmilien Dumas. He was 

 convinced that these caverns proved incontestably the mixing of 

 human bones with those of extinct animals, and M. Cordier, the 

 reporter of the paper, thought the facts of the deepest interest 

 (id., p. 93), but the value of the observation is qualified by the fact 

 that he claims to have found pieces of pottery at all levels in the 

 cave. In a second communication made to the Annales des Sciences 

 in 1829 (op. cit., vol. xviii, p. 247 ; and Bull. Sci. Nat., ch. xix, 

 pp. 18-28), Tournal, referring to the recent researches of Christol 

 just mentioned, says that they confirmed what he had long main- 

 tained, that man was contemporary with the extinct animals. He 

 says that Christol had shown him human bones which he had found 

 at a great depth in the caverns of the Gard, and that it was im- 

 possible to separate them in regard to condition from those of the 

 lion, tiger, and the hyaena found with them ; their chemical and 

 physical condition was the same. In regard to the caverns of the 

 Bize, he added the fresh fact that certain of the animals' bones had 

 marks of human workmanship upon them. Tournal concludes his 

 paper with a sentence which, as M. Cartailhac says, has the audacity 

 of genius, considering that it was written in 1829. " La geologic," 

 he says, " commence la ou I'archeologie s'arrete : lorsque celle-ci aura 

 epuise ces recherches et rencontre le voile mysterieux et impenetrable 

 que couvre I'origine des nations, la geologie donnant un supplement 

 a nos courtes annales, viendra reveiller I'orgueil humain, en lui 

 montrant I'antiquite de sa race ; car la geologie seul peut desormais 

 nous donner quelques notions sur I'epoque de la premiere apparition 

 de I'homme sur le globe terrestre." 



It is a matter of regret that the caves so diligently explored by 

 Tournal should have had their contents disturbed and rearranged 

 by secondary burials, and should have differed in this respect from 

 those at Gailenreuth, where the stratum containing the extinct animals 

 was apparently intact. The early French explorers were also not 

 sufficiently careful in their digging to separate the different layers, 

 nor was it known at that time that so-called Palseolithic man had 

 not learnt the use of pottery. 



These difficulties in a measure justified the scepticism of Cuvier, 

 and led to these French discoveries and their importance being 

 underrated, but when we have discounted the adventitious elements 

 in them we cannot doubt that the human bones (especially those 

 found by Tournal) were found together with the extinct ones in 



