19 i BEAIN-WEIGHT AND SIZE IN RELATION 



in that of La Madelaine, numerous specimens of primitive- art haYC 

 been found : tools and weapons of flint, carved lances and harpoons 

 of bone; and ingenious engravings and carvings of the mammoth,. 

 reindeer, and of man himself, on pieces of horn and ivory tablets. 

 The evidences of primitive skill and intellectual vigour are remark- 

 able. Dr. Broca, after a review of their ingenious arts, says : " They 

 had advanced to the very threshold of civilization;" and Dr. Pruner- 

 Bey thus comments on their characteristics : " If we consider that its 

 three individuals had a cranial capacity much superior to the average 

 at the present day ; that one of them was a female, and that female 

 crania are generally below the average of male crania in size ; and 

 that nevertheless the cranial capacity of the Cro-Magnon woman sur- 

 passes the average capacity of male skulls of to-day, we are led to 

 regard the great size of the brain as one of the more remarkable 

 characters of the Cro-Magnon race. This cerebral volume seems to 

 me even to exceed that with which at the present day a stature equal 

 to that of our cave-folks would be associated : whilst the skulls from 

 the Belgium caves are small, not only absolutely, but even relatively 

 in the rather small stature of the inhabitants of those caves."* 



The remarkable cranial capacity of the skulls thus seemingly per- 

 taining to the most primitive of European races — the troglodytes 

 of the mammoth and reindeer periods of Central Europe, — is the 

 m.ore significant from its bearing on the evidence of progressive 

 cerebral development adduced by Dr. Broca from skulls recovered 

 from, ancient and modern cemeteries of Paris. It appears indeed 

 to conflict with any theory of a progressive development from the 

 Troglodyte of the post'-glacial age to the civilized Frenchman of 

 modem times. Mr. W. Boyd Dawkins has accordingly been at 

 some pains in his " Cave Hunting," to show that the conclusions 

 formed by previous observers as to the epoch of their burial ai-e not 

 supported by the facts of the case ; and he sums up his review of the 

 whole evidence by expressing a conviction that he " should feel 

 inclined to assign the interments to the neolithic age, in which cave- 

 burial was so common. The facts," he adds, " do not warrant the 

 human skeletons being taken as proving the physique of the palseo- 

 lithic hunters of the Dordogne, or as a basis for an inquiry into the 

 ethnology of the palseolithic races." Mr. Boyd Dawkins also pro- 

 nounces the same doubts in reference to the equally characteristic 



* "Eeliquiae Aquitanicse." 



