5 5 2 PREHISTORIC E UR OPE. 



as in that of Gourdan, described by M. Piette, which lead to the 

 suspicion that the interval between the Palaeolithic and Neolithic 

 Ages in Southern France may not have been prolonged, that the 

 former may have merged somewhat suddenly with the latter. 

 This is the view which M. de Quatrefages among others 

 inclines to support, basing his opinion upon anthropological 

 considerations. He lays considerable stress upon the results 

 obtained by MM. Lartet and Duparc in their examinations 

 of the rock-shelter of Sorde in the Department of the Basses- 

 Pyrenees, where a superficial stratum with Neolithic relics was 

 found resting upon a Palaeolithic accumulation, with the upper 

 portion of which it was partly confounded. In the lower part 

 of the Palaeolithic beds a human skull and bones were found, 

 together with a necklace of the teeth of the lion and bear, while 

 in the upper portion, which consisted largely of charcoal, many 

 Palaeolithic implements and barbed arrows of the " Magdalenian 

 type " were detected. Mixed with these were bones of ox, horse, 

 and reindeer — the latter being rarer than the others. In the 

 overlying Neolithic layer, composed chiefly of human bones, 

 were obtained several worked flints resembling those of the 

 beds below, and a triangular dagger of unmistakable Neolithic 

 workmanship. Now the human remains of both levels are 

 referred by M. Hamy, with whom M. de Quatrefages quite 

 agrees, to one and the same race of people — to that, namely, 

 which is designated by them the " Cro-Magnon race " — of which 

 the types are the skulls of an old man and a woman that were 

 obtained along with many remains of the Pleistocene mam- 

 malia from a cave at Les Eyzies on the banks of the Vezere. 

 " Is it not evident," asks Quatrefages, " that this race must have 

 known both the latest times of the Eeindeer age, and the earliest 

 of the present epoch?" He and his collaborateur M. Hamy, 

 indeed, recognise the Cro-Magnon type in human remains which 

 have come from many other Neolithic stations, and not only so 

 but even in races still living, as for example in the Kabyles of 

 the Beni Massar and the Djurjura of North-western Africa. It 

 is, however, more especially in the Canary Islands and Teneriffe, 



