PLEISTOCENE CAVE-DEPOSITS. 115 



these and other general considerations for the present, I would 

 merely recapitulate a few points which seem to be of special 

 importance. 



The first of these is the fact that in many bone-caves of 

 Palaeolithic age, the upper deposits contain relics which evince 

 more skill, and, upon the whole, a greater degree of advance 

 than those that are common in the lower accumulations. Are 

 we to believe that we have, in this case, proofs of a gradual 

 advance in the same people from a very low state of savagery 

 to a less barbarous condition ? Or may the difference between 

 the implements of the lower and upper deposits simply show 

 that one tribe was dispossessed by another coming later in time 

 into Western Europe ? Again, have we any reason to believe 

 that the cave-deposits of the so-called Reindeer period are, in 

 all cases, of later date than those cave-accumulations which con- 

 tain more abundant remains of the extinct species, and which 

 are assigned by some archaeologists to what is called the Mam- 

 moth period ? May not it be that one set of caves was inha- 

 bited contemporaneously with the other ; in other words, may 

 not the men who fashioned the rudest flint implements have 

 lived at the same time as the artistic tribes of the Dordogne and 

 other places ? I have already quoted some remarks made by 

 Professor Dawkins to the effect that any attempt to classify cave- 

 deposits according to the relative rudeness of their implements 

 cannot be relied upon, because " the difference may have been 

 due to different tribes or families having co-existed without 

 intercourse with each other." And the same osteologist has 

 pointed out that the northern, southern, and temperate species 

 of mammalia are so associated together in the Pleistocene 

 deposits of Europe, that no classification can be founded upon 

 the relative predominance or scarcity of any particular species in 

 the caves. " The difference," says Professor Dawkins, " between 

 the contents of one Palaeolithic cave and another, is probably 

 largely due to the fact that man could more easily catch some 

 animals than others, as well as to the preference for one kind of 

 food before another. And the abundance of the reindeer, which 



