A Prehistoric Burial Place. 521 



fishing and the cliase, inhabit frequently mere caves and hollows in 

 the rocks, before which they hang the skins of reindeer; and 

 which they furnish, as well as they can, with driftwood, skins, and 

 mats. Their arms are sharpened stones, their arrows, and lances 

 pointed with cut bones of animals or the sharp bones of fish. Some 

 even of the Esquimaux and Tchouktsches carve on the teeth of 

 animals sketches of the products of the chase, and share, with all 

 similar races, the habit of fracturing the bones to extract the marrow. 



Such undoubted evidence as this supplies matter for reasonable 

 comparison for the caverns of Sorde. There, too, is an equal absence 

 of metal as a material for weapons. There, too, the bony fragments 

 bear on them "owner-marks," and sculptures which, though roughly 

 executed, are definite and clear. There, again, flints, worked into 

 artistic shapes in some instances, and roughly bi'oken to form scrapers 

 or lance points in others, are sufficiently plentiful. 



That generations, or even perhaps races of Troglodytes have in- 

 habited these countless excavations of Sorde, is evident from the 

 layers of burnt ashes and reddened earth marking the sites of 

 fires ; between which are the gradual accumulations of soil and 

 refuse, the result of the decomposition of the limestone rock and 

 other natural causes. The successive inhabitants, too, seem to have 

 been singularly incurious. Rarely have the lower remains been dis- 

 turbed by the later people ; and where they have been moved, the 

 presence of bones and skulls of foxes, which to the present day 

 make their burrows in these hollows, is enough to account for the 

 occasional irregularity of the deposits. This more particularly 

 applies to the human skeletons which in the higher levels of ac- 

 cumulation were so numerous as to show that the final utilization of 

 the caves had been for sepulchral purposes. 



The lower stratum contained the most interesting relics ; for about 

 fifty teeth of the Lion and Bear were fotmd, all of which were 

 pierced for stringing, and marked either with lines in continuation 

 of the fissures in the enamel, or by zigzag, cuneiform, sagittate, or 

 other marks. Mr. Lartet attributes no especial meaning to these 

 marks, signs, or ornaments, but notices the symmetrical position of 

 some as pairs, one on each side of the tooth. 



Whether rough attempts of the draughtsman in his first effort at 

 combining the straight lines easily made by a rough flint tool, or, as 

 suggested by Professor T. Eupert Jones, F.E.S., in his exhaustive 

 paper on such markings,^ indications of ownership, tallies, or 

 gambling marks, similar, in themselves unmeaning, marks are found 

 on the tools and weapons of existing Northern races. Sufficiently 

 distinct outlines of Pike and Seal are boldly cut on two of the 

 Bear's teeth ; and, curiously enough, there are on the sides of one 

 tooth roughly executed drawings of hands encased in mittens, 

 similar to those of the reindeer-hunters of Perigord, or, to compare 

 them with existing types, of the same kind as those worn by Esqui- 

 maux and others, who, as hunters of seal and deer, inhabit the 

 borders of the frozen seas. 



1 " Eeliquias Aquitanicae," livr. xiii,, p. 183, etc. 



