42 PREHISTORIC E UR OPE. 



in the south of France, we may well believe that the major 

 portion of Middle and Northern Europe would be a dreary 

 desert waste. The temperate fauna would be living in the 

 southern districts of our continent and North Africa, but it 

 is very doubtful whether the hippopotamus would be able to 

 endure the winter cold which must then have characterised the 

 shores of the Mediterranean. 



We have seen that archaeologists have good reasons for 

 thinking that the men who lived in the south of France in the 

 latest stage of the Palaeolithic Period were associated with the 

 reindeer and the mammoth. The fact that the climate was then 

 cold and ungenial is curiously illustrated by the circumstance 

 pointed out by the late Mr. Christy that heaps of bones and 

 other garbage could be safely left by the Palaeolithic hunters to 

 accumulate on the floors of the caves where they lived. Had 

 the climate been other than frigid it is not likely that this would 

 have been the case, for under a mild temperature such refuse- 

 heaps would putrefy, and their exhalations become unbearable. 

 Nor are the reindeer and the mammoth the only animals whose 

 presence testifies to the former rigour of the climate in the south 

 of France and North-western Europe. Small animals, such as 

 marmots, lemmings, and tailless hares, occupied at the same 

 time the low grounds of England, Belgium, and France ; and 

 whatever we may think of the evidence yielded by the reindeer, 

 we cannot but admit that the presence of the smaller animals 

 points to a settled occupation of the land that endured for a 

 prolonged period. Even if we conceded the possibility of the 

 reindeer having migrated from Norway and the Highlands of 

 Scotland down to the south of France in one season, we should 

 still be unable to allow that marmots and pikas could have per- 

 formed the same annual journey. The lemmings of the Old 

 Stone Age doubtless lived very much in the same way as their 

 descendants in Lapland do at the present day, namely on roots, 

 grass, the shoots of dwarf willow and birch, and largely on 

 lichens, for which they burrow in winter time under the snow. 

 They, with their congeners the marmots, tailless hares, arctic 



