518 Beviews — Lartet fij- Duparc — ■ 



I. — A BuKiAL Place of the ancient Cave-folk of the Pyrenees, 



OVERLYING HeAKTH-STUFF CONTAINING HUMAN EeMAINS, ETC. 



By Louis Lartet aad Chaplain Duparc. (Une Sepulture des 

 anciens Troglodytes des Pyrenees, etc.) 8vo. pp. 67. (Masson, 

 Paris.) 



THE study of Prehistoric Archaeology is one of comparatively 

 modern origin. As a distinct branch, of scientific research, it is 

 only within late years that it has attracted notice, chiefly, perhaps, 

 because of the previous want of that tangible evidence afforded by 

 actual discoveries of human life and handiwork which have, since the 

 beginning of the century, been yearly increasing in number, and 

 more earnestly and persistently studied. 



The pamphlet written by MM. Lartet and Duparc furnishes us 

 with another most valuable addition to our literature on the subject ; 

 valuable, not merely because of the actual detailed information given 

 us, but because the authors have given their reasons for considering 

 the deductions, as to the history of these early races, trustworthy 

 and sound. 



The opponents to the theories supported by M. Lartet have seized 

 with avidity any facts that could support their own hypothesis. Dr. 

 Schliemann's discoveries in the Troad, where stone implements were 

 found with ornaments and figures of a high type of art, have led 

 them to bring the " Stone Age," and hence that of " Cave Man," 

 within historic times. 



It is justly asked by our authors why, if such be the case, should 

 the valleys of Syria and Phoenicia contain both undoubted traces of 

 prehistoric habitations, and weapons identical in type and character 

 ■with those employed by the old hunters of Aquitaine, and equally 

 recognized remains known to be of a far later date ? 



Science is, after all, but "facts generalized"; and the arguments 

 in favour of such a view as the authors advocate are based, as 

 they clearly assert, on facts on which a theoretical superstructure 

 is erected, — a vastly different thing, be it remembered, from an 

 hypothesis founded on possibilities only. Still, the question is un- 

 doubtedly discussed in general from two exaggerated grounds ; one 

 side boldly, but somewhat rashly, placing the appearance of man far 

 back into the Tertiary geological period ; the other insisting that our 

 history and our traditions fix the exact limit of his early existence. 



Taking (say our authors) as a fair assumption, that man could 

 exist in the Miocene period, inasmuch as both fauna and flora are 

 types of those existing at the present time, it is only necess'ary to 

 recognize that a change of temperature and alterations in the relative 

 level of land and sea, of which there is sufficiently good evidence, not 

 even questioned by the opponents to the theory of the existence of 

 pre-historic races, would at once provide the conditions under which 

 these races could have lived. 



The facts on which the theory of the very early existence of man- 

 kind is based appear to be these (page 6, etc.). 



