CONCLUSION. 547 



were identical with the Palaeolithic tribes, who had somehow 

 acquired a knowledge of husbandry, spinning, and pottery ; who 

 had learned to domesticate certain animals, and to finish their 

 implements more perfectly, while at the same time they had lost 

 the art of freehand drawing. All this is possible, but, on the 

 other hand, it is so extremely improbable that until some posi- 

 tive evidence in favour of such a view be advanced we may well 

 leave it out of account. I repeat, then, that not a vestige or 

 trace of the Palaeolithic-implement-using race occurs in any of 

 those deposits which were accumulated in Central and North- 

 western Europe in Late Glacial and Postglacial times. The 

 men who entered Northern Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Bel- 

 gium, Northern Prance, the British area, and Scandinavia, after 

 the great glaciers had retreated and the rivers had returned to 

 their normal condition, were in many ways farther advanced in 

 civilisation than their predecessors of Palaeolithic times ; so 

 great, indeed, is the difference between the conditions of life that 

 obtained in the two Ages of Stone that we can hardly doubt 

 that the two peoples came of different stocks. What fate, then, 

 overtook the artistic reindeer-hunters of Perigord ? At present 

 we cannot tell. All that can be said upon the subject is only 

 more or less plausible conjecture. Some hold that they probably 

 migrated northwards with the reindeer, and retired to Arctic 

 regions, where, according to Professor Dawkins, they are repre- 

 sented by the Eskimo. Eeferring to the well-known fact that 

 a hard-and-fast line of demarcation separates the Neolithic from 

 the Palaeolithic Age in every country where their relics occur, 

 Mr. Dawkins remarks that this would not have been the case 

 had the Palaeolithic race or races been absorbed by Neolithic 

 invaders. "How, then," he asks, "can we account for their 

 disappearance ? Simply by assuming that at the close of the 

 Pleistocene Age, when they came into contact with Neolithic 

 invaders, there were the same feelings between them as existed 

 in Hearne's times between the Eskimos and the Eed Indian, 

 terror and defenceless hatred being, on the one side, met by 

 ruthless extermination on the other. In this way the Cave-men 



