n8 PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 



proof in the commingled remains of animals that belong to 

 widely- separated zones of considerable changes of climate. 

 Cold and genial conditions had alternated long before the time 

 when the caves of Perigord were tenanted by the artistic 

 reindeer -hunter ; for plentiful remains of northern, temperate, 

 and southern species occur in deposits, that go back to much 

 earlier dates. Whether we shall ever be able, from a study of 

 the bone-caves alone, to discover how many such changes took 

 place during the Old Stone Age, is extremely doubtful ; we 

 might even say, highly improbable. But there are various 

 collateral lines of evidence, which, if followed up, will, I believe, 

 greatly aid us in our endeavours, and eventually help us to 

 decipher much that is at present enigmatical and obscure. 



Not only do the cave -deposits bear witness to past vicis- 

 situdes of climate — to changes in the relative position of land 

 and sea, — to considerable modifications in the physical features 

 of our river -valleys — and to the prolonged duration of that 

 period during which man was contemporaneous with the 

 extinct or no longer indigenous mammalia, — but they also 

 testify to the remarkable fact that the Old Stone Age did not 

 graduate as it were into the New Stone Age. The records of 

 the latter epoch are separated very markedly from those of the 

 former. No sooner do we pass from the uppermost deposits of 

 Pleistocene age to the more modern accumulations, than all at 

 once we find ourselves in quite another world. The hyaenas 

 and lions, the rhinoceroses and mammoths, have disappeared, 

 and we are now face to face with a group of animals that we 

 recognise as being the common indigenous European forms of 

 our own day. Palaeolithic man has likewise vanished, and his 

 place is supplied by races considerably farther advanced on the 

 road to civilisation. Neolithic man was not only a hunter and 

 fisher like his predecessors, but he possessed some knowledge 

 of agriculture, and of the arts of weaving and making pottery. 

 His implements show more variety of design and are upon the 

 whole much better finished, being frequently ground at the 

 edges, and often smoothed and polished. He was also accom- 



