278 Reviews — Lartefs and Christy's Reliquice. 



Eyzies. The objects found in these Caves, not only furnished us 

 with the most satisfactory proofs of the contemporaneity of Man and 

 the Mammoth, but they revealed the most curious details of the life 

 and manners of the old Cave-dwellers of Perigord ; still we were 

 without any knowledge of the anatomical characters of this intel- 

 ligent and artistic race, whose clever carvings are objects of our 

 astonishment. 



"The excavations lately made near Les Eyzies, by M. Louis 

 Lartet, enable us to supply this want ; and there cannot be any 

 doubt of the authenticity and high antiquity of the human bones 

 there exhumed." 



M. Broca is of opinion that the human remains found at Cro- 

 Magnon are not only " as old as, but even perhaps older than the 

 carved objects from the great Les Eyzies Cave. The latter corres- 

 pond with the period when the Keindeer predominated in the fauna ; 

 whilst the former belong rather to the period of the Mammoth ; 

 and though a considerable time must have elapsed between the two 

 periods, yet there is nothing to hinder the belief of the gradual 

 passage from one to the other, without any ethnic revolution, the 

 same race maintaining itself in the samq district uninterruptedly ; so 

 that, if the bones from Cro-Magnon are not those of the artists of 

 the Eeindeer Period, they are at least those of the ancestors of that 

 people." 



Notwithstanding the great antiquity of these remains, on con- 

 trasting them with skulls and bones of the limbs from the Belgian 

 Caves, belonging, no doubt, to an equally remote race of pre- 

 historic men, M. Broca is struck with the marked distiactness of 

 type which they present. " They differ from each other," observes 

 Prof. Broca, " as much at least as modern races differ from one 

 another." M. Broca evidently considers this to be a strong argu- 

 ment against the unity of origin of mankind ; but to us it only seems 

 to prove that of which geologists at the present day are becoming 

 more and more convinced, namely, that our ideas of time being all 

 derived from and limited to the records of historical events of 

 civilized races, we are unable to conceive justly the relative duration 

 of the existence of savage races of mankind previous to the period 

 when they were brought in contact with the disturbing influences of 

 even a semibarbarous civilization. So that it will be found, as our 

 knowledge of the Quaternary epoch increases, so will our estimate 

 of the duration of time over which it extended increase. 



We have in the plates, accompanying this part, illustrations of 

 oval and round Mortar-stones and Eubber-stones, used probably in 

 the preparation of food or in finishing the manufacture of stone or 

 bone implements. Also figures of flint implements and scrapers, 

 and perforated Eeindeer's horns which may have formed parts of 

 sledges. 



This work, when completed, will prove, like the Christy Collec- 

 tion, which it illustrates, a most valuable contribution to pre-historic 

 archaeology and alike interesting to French and English ethnologists. 



