7 8 PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 



again, may occur a second cave-eartli containing similar relics 

 and remains, and separated from the " earth " above by a second 

 uninterrupted pavement of stalagmite. It is perfectly certain, 

 therefore, that the caves were occupied alternately by wild 

 beasts and savage men for longer or shorter periods. And as if 

 to make assurance of their contemporaneity doubly sure, we have 

 the strong evidence of the Palaeolithic carvings and etchings, 

 to which reference has already been made. No one now ques- 

 tions the fact that man lived through all those remarkable 

 geographical and climatic changes to which the old mammalia 

 bear testimony. This is one of the questions which has passed 

 out of tbe category of mere ingenious conjecture and plausible 

 inference into that of well-assured and demonstrated fact. I 

 need not, therefore, pause to recontrovert the views of those who 

 have maintained that tbe stone celts are mere natural produc- 

 tions ; that the " worked flints " have been chipped into their 

 present forms by the action of frost, or by knocking about in 

 tbe beds of rivers, or by any of the manifold modes in which 

 rocks are broken up and disintegrated by natural forces. To 

 those who have been used almost daily during many years to 

 handle naturally-broken stones of all kinds, and to break and 

 chip them for themselves, such views necessarily appear futile 

 and inconsequent, the peculiar chipping to which the flints have 

 been subjected pointing unmistakably to man's handiwork. 

 " No man," Professor Kamsay remarks, " who knows how chalk- 

 flints are fractured by nature would doubt the artificial character 

 of these ancient tools or weapons." Several eminent geologists, 

 however, compassionating the difficulties of less experienced 

 observers, have replied in detail to the objections which were at 

 one time raised to the human origin of the " worked flints." 

 That task having been accomplished, no one now doubts the 

 artificial origin of these implements any more than one disbe- 

 lieves that man's hands made the bone-needles, awls, and har- 

 poons, or etched the remarkable outline -sketches of mammoth 

 and reindeer. 



Let us now glance at the evidence which the cave-accumu- 



