ABSENCE OF HUMAN BONES. 281 



country, and the contemporary animals, we shall be better 

 able to form an idea of the habits of these our ancient and 

 long lost progenitors. 



If we except the Moulin Quignon jaw, of which the au- 

 thenticity is, to say the least, very doubtful, no bones of 

 men have up to the present time been found in the strata 

 containing the flint implements. This, though it has ap- 

 peared to some so inexplicable as to throw a doubt on 

 the whole question, is, on consideration, less extraordinary 

 than it might at first sight appear to be. If, for instance, 

 we turn to other remains of human settlements, we shall 

 find a repetition of the same phenomenon. Thus in the 

 Danish refuse-heaps, where worked flints are a thousand 

 times more plentiful than in the St. Acheul gravel, human 

 bones are of the greatest rarity. At this period, as in the 

 Drift age, mankind lived by hunting and fishing, and 

 could not, therefore, be very numerous. In the era, how- 

 ever, of the Swiss Lake-habitations, the case was different. 

 M. Troyon estimates the population of the "Pfahlbauten " 

 during the Stone age as about 32,000 ; in the Bronze 

 era, 42,000. On these calculations, indeed, even their 

 ingenious author would not probably place much reliance : 

 still, the number of the Lake-villages already known is 

 very considerable ; in four of the Swiss lakes only, more 

 than seventy have been discovered, and some of them were 

 of great extent : Wangen, for instance, being, according to 

 M. Lohle, supported on more than 40,000 piles. Yet, if we 

 exclude a few bones of children, human remains have been 

 obtained from these settlements in five cases only. The num- 

 ber of flint implements obtained hitherto from the drift of the 

 Somme valley, is not supposed to have greatly exceeded 3000 ;* 



* One of the tumuli in the Missis- implements. This, howeyer, must have 

 sippi Valley is estimated to have alone been a very exceptional case, 

 contained nearly four thousand stone 



