548 PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 



would be gradually driven from Europe without leaving any 

 mark on the succeeding peoples either in blood or in manners 

 and customs." This is certainly a simple assumption, so much 

 so, indeed, that I fear Mr. Dawkins must have made it without 

 due consideration ; for, even granting that Palaeolithic man was 

 scared out of Europe by the terrible apparition of Neolithic in- 

 vaders, are we to suppose that this had the same effect upon the 

 fauna and flora ? Did reindeer, musk-sheep, mammoth, hyaena, 

 and cave-bear at once vanish from the scene, and a temperate 

 flora, replacing the arctic willows and dwarf birches, spring up 

 as if by magic in the low grounds of Central and North-western 

 Europe ? 



The same writer, as I have mentioned, identifies the Eskimo 

 with Palaeolithic man, and certainly there are several points in 

 which the living northern race resembles the ancient inhabitants 

 of Pleistocene France. I here quote Mr. Dawkins's own sum- 

 ming-up of the evidence upon which he founds : — " The identity 

 of four of the harpoons, of fowling-spears, marrow-spoons, and 

 scrapers ; the habit of sculpturing animals on their implements ; 

 the absence of pottery ; the same method of crushing the bones 

 of the animals slain in hunting, and their accumulation in one 

 spot ; the carelessness about the remains of their dead relatives ; 

 the fact that the food consisted chiefly of reindeer, varied with 

 the flesh of other animals, such as the musk-sheep ; and especi- 

 ally the small stature, as proved in the people of the Dordogne 

 caverns, by the small-handled dagger figured by MM. Lartet and 

 Christy. . . . This combination of characters is found, so far 

 as I know, among no other people on the face of the earth except 

 the Esquimaux ; and therefore I cannot help believing that this 

 people in South Gaul occupies the same relation to the Esqui- 

 maux, as the musk-sheep and the reindeer, on which they lived, 

 hold to those now living in the northern regions." 1 This corre- 



1 See Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. xxiii. p. 183. More recently Mr. Dawkins 

 has insisted upon the striking resemblance of certain perforated implements (see 

 supra, p. 14) to the " arrow-straightener " of the Eskimo. But the close simi- 

 larity to which he has drawn attention one may readily admit without feeling 

 constrained to conclude that the Palaeolithic and modern implements in question 





