752 The Origin of the Domestic Animals. [December, 
brought. us a textile plant, of which they made great use, 2. e., 
ax. is plant is most useful in determining with precision the 
point of departure of the Robenhausian civilization, This civili- 
zation did not come from North-eastern Asia; for in China they 
have the hemp, a textile plant much more useful than flax ; but 
the hemp was completely unknown in Western Europe during 
the entire polished stone epoch. 
Flax also was very widely spread in ancient Egypt, to the 
exclusion of hemp. It can perhaps be inferred from this that the 
civilization which we have studied has come from Egypt, or at 
least from South-western Asia. To recognize the slight founda- 
tion of this assertion it suffices to return to the domestic animals. 
We have seen that the great migration of the Robenhausian or 
polished stone epoch brought us the domestic horse. However, 
the domestic horse, far from having originated in Egypt, was not 
introduced into that country until after the time of the pastoral 
kings, at the beginning of the eighteenth dynasty, in the eighteenth 
century before our era. The first domestic equid of Egypt was 
the ass, an animal of African origin. But the ass did not occur 
at all in Europe during the stone age. This absence of the ass, 
a very useful animal which lives very well in our climate, is also 
a proof that the civilization of the first great European migration 
did not come from South-western Asia, which has wild horses 
allied to the ass, such as the onager, which inhabits the shores of 
the Indus and eaten to Southern Persia; or the hemione of 
Upper Asia and Mongolia. Everything in the study of the 
domestic animals and cultivated plants concurs, then, to prove 
that the first great migration which entered the south-west of 
Europe, at the Robenhausian epoch, came from Asia Minor, 
Armenia and the Caucasus. From our actual knowledge, we — 
cannot establish whether this migration has followed the route of 
the land or even the course of the sea; but this much is certain, 
that in either case it reached us by the ‘Mediterranean basin. If, 
without pastoral and agricultural facts, we seek proofs of this 
fact, we shall find in it the retrograde artistic movernent, and in 
_ the introduction of architecture or the appearance of a monu- 
ment, the dolmen. : 
= The last populations of the geological periods, that of the 
nounced artistic sentiment. We have SS in France, in aver : 
_ Magdalenian epoch which terminated this period, had a very pro- 2 
