FISH DEBRIS—HUNTERS BEFORE FISHERS 25 
original and academic. Here is the sheer beginning, the 
spontaneous germ of art, the labourings of a savage soul con- 
trolled by wilful esthetic emotions.” ! 
This review of the fishing weapons and methods of the 
races cited—especially of the Eskimos and the Tasmanians, 
the races closest to the Troglodytes—provides data which 
make for a plausible conjecture, but none, owing to differing 
conditions caused by climate or custom, which enable a definite 
decision as to priority of implement. 
Let us return from this survey of races to the cavernes and 
examine their contents.2 Their débris (at times ten feet deep 
and seventy long) manifests that these stations served as 
habitations for several generations of men. 
From nearly all the French stations neighbouring the sea 
or rivers, bones of fish, especially of salmon, have been recovered. 
These have been identified, but not without some dissent, as 
belonging to the Tunny, Labrax lupus, Eel, Carp, Barbel, 
Trout, and Esox luctus. 
The presence of the last, our pike, in this (and again in 
Neolithic) débvis excites our interest as evidence that the 
Troglodytes knew and made use of a fish whose absence, 
despite its wide geographical distribution, from all Greek and 
Latin literature until we reach the time of Ausonius, Cuvier, 
or more strictly Valenciennes, notes with extreme surprise.3 
While in La Madelaine and elsewhere fish occur abundantly 
in the débris, at some cavernes in the Vézére Valley, notably 
Le Moustier, they cannot be traced. Their absence coupled 
with the presence of animal bones has led some archeologists 
to the conclusion that Le Moustier and other stations were 
earlier inhabited than La Madelaine, at a time, in fact, when 
according to Paul Broca, “‘ Man hunted the smaller animals as 
1 E, J. Banfield, Confessions of a Beachcomber, London, 1913. 
? For descriptions of Paleolithic life, see Worthington G. Smith, Man the 
Primal Savage, London, 1894, and J. J. Atkinson, Pyimal Law, London, 1903. 
For the community assumed by the former, Atkinson substitutes a family 
group. 
8 Cuvier and Valenciennes, Hist. Nat. des Poissons, vol. xviii, pp. 279-80, 
Paris, 1846. Since in this volume the geographical distribution of the pike, 
as known at the time, is set forth without any mention of Greece, it is rather 
difficult to-understand the surprise of Valenciennes, who wrote the volume in 
question ; Cuvier died in 1832. 
