THE HARLYN BURIALS. 105 



This statement may be doubted, because at Harlyn trinkets 

 of bronze, iron, and even Roman pottery have been found, but 

 we must be careful how we allow the later relics to influence 

 our judgment, or we shall fall into strange errors. To take a 

 few parallel cases. In the cavern of Kozarnia in Poland, the 

 cave-earth contained the bones of the mammoth and rhinoceros, 

 also a bronze fibula, an iron spear-head, and a Eoman coin of 

 Antoninus Pius, who was Emperor in the 2nd century after 

 Christ. Is the coin to fix the date of the cave-earth, and must 

 we conclude that the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros were 

 living in Northern Europe two hundred years after Christ ? Of 

 course not ; no archaeologist would dream of coming to such a 

 conclusion. Poman pottery was found in a neighbouring cave, 

 by the side of the bones of the lion and hytena, but the pottery 

 had evidently been introduced at a later period. At the burial 

 place of Solutre bronze and Poman relics lie amongst the box 

 tombs made of stone slabs, and side by side with the bones of 

 the lion and elephant, ^'^ but we cannot believe that these animals 

 were living in France in the days of the Poman occupation of 

 that country. Beneath the dolmens in Prance and England 

 Poman coins are often found, but surely no one believes that 

 dolmen-building went on in these countries under the eyes of 

 Pomans. The Neolithic burial places in France have been 

 ransacked again and again, during the ages of bronze and iron, 

 and also in Poman times. The French archaeologists record 

 numerous instances of this and of later burials in the old 

 cemeteries, while in some cases the exact amount of disturbance 

 done in Poman days can be accurately ascertained.^'' Until 

 further evidence is produced, I shall therefore regard the bronze, 

 iron, and Poman relics at Harlyn as merely later introductions, 

 as they have been proved to be in many French Neolithic burial 

 places. One is led to ask, who were these people who buried in 

 stone-faced graves, in contracted position ? Were they connected 

 with the dolmen-building race ? Were they even the same 

 peojile? The theory is plausible, for the distribution of the 

 dolmens follows almost the same line, along the southern shore 

 of the Mediterranean through Spain and France to England, as 



12. La France Prehistorigue, p. g6. 

 \i. Ibid, Chap. xvii. 



