March 13, 1885.] 



SCIENCE. 



219 



problem, many refused to admit the human 

 origin of the flints ; among them John Evans, 

 whose competency to pronounce an opinion 

 cannot be questioned. Of those who believed 

 them to be the work of men, some thought 

 that they were of more recent origin than the 

 beds in which they were found. In their judg- 

 ment, the flints came from the surface, and had 

 been washed by floods into crevices previously 

 existing in the miocene clays. Thus the ques- 

 tion was practically left in the same condition 

 in which it stood before : the sanguine believed 

 that the existence of the tertiary man had been 

 demonstrated, while the cautious waited for 

 further evidence. We do not find in the report 

 airy thing essential added to the abstracts of 

 the various arguments that have been previ- 

 ously published ; and the editor apologizes for 

 not having given any figures of the particular 

 objects that served as the basis for discussion, 

 on the ground, that, as Ribeiro had not made 

 the necessaiy selection, he feared to do it him- 

 self, lest he might by chance omit some capital 

 piece of evidence. 



Many important papers in various depart- 

 ments of archeology, read before the congress, 

 are here given at length, of which we have 

 only space to allude to a few, especially such 

 as relate to the antiquities of Portugal. 



The publication of the careful account of the 

 researches of Sen. Vasconcellos in the valley 

 of the Douro, with the accompanying plates, 

 will have a tendency to add Portugal to the 

 list of the countries of Europe in which the 

 quaternaiy gravels have yielded human imple- 

 ments. The objects found consist of a num- 

 ber of very rude quartzites of the St. Acheul 

 type, which, however, some of the members 

 refused to admit to be artificial at all. Thus 

 far, no organic remains have been found ac- 

 companying them in this locality ; but in a 

 cavern at Furninha, near Peniche, on Cape 

 Carvoeiro, Sen. Delgado has discovered a de- 

 posit of quaternary gravel, which had been 

 introduced by a natural opening in the roof, 

 and in this he found a fragment of a lower 

 human jaw, together with a fine specimen of a 

 flint axe of the St. Acheul type. These are 

 all the instances given of the discovery of ves- 

 tiges of the quaternary man in Portugal, al- 

 though Sen. Ribeiro, in his opening address, 

 alludes to them as having been made in the 

 valley of the Tagus, in the district of Alemtejo, 

 and near Coimbra. 



One of the most interesting papers is Sen. 

 Delgado' s methodical and lucid narrative of 

 his exploration of the cavern of Furninha, and 

 of the discoveries made in it pertaining to the 



neolithic period. Great quantities of human 

 bones were found, and man}' of them were 

 broken, as if to extract the marrow, and cal- 

 cined, precisely like those of animals used for 

 food ; so that the explanation of cannibalism 

 at once suggests itself. But as pottery, pol- 

 ished stone axes, and other implements and 

 ornaments were also found with them, Car- 

 tailhac stoutly maintained the theory that the 

 cavern had been used as a place of sepulture. 

 Although cannibalism has undoubtedly been 

 practised by many modern savage races, its 

 existence among the prehistoric peoples of 

 western Europe is much disputed. An ani- 

 mated discussion upon this point, and a refer- 

 ence of the facts and arguments to a commission 

 of experts, resulted in about an equal division 

 of opinion. 



Sen. Ribeiro gave an account of his explora- 

 tion of kitchen-middens situated on the south- 

 ern bank of the Tagus, about forty miles above 

 Lisbon. The largest covered an area of some 

 three hundred feet by a hundred and eighty, 

 and was about twenty-one feet thick in its 

 deepest part. The most remarkable circum- 

 stance connected with it was the discover}*, in 

 this restricted space, of no less than a hundred 

 and twenty human skeletons, without any of the 

 usual objects that accompany prehistoric inter- 

 ments. Not a trace of pottery was found, and 

 such implements as were met with were of the 

 rudest description, made of quartzite or flint 

 and bone. Many bones of animals were scat- 

 tered throughout the mass, but none of domestic 

 animals except the dog. Like the kitchen- 

 middens of Denmark, these seem to belong to 

 the very beginning of the neolithic period. 

 The study of the crania found in them, shows, 

 according to Quatrefages, a type quite distinct 

 from that of Cro-Magnon. 



An entertaining paper by Sen. Pedroso gives 

 an account of certain popular forms and cus- 

 toms in reference to marriage, still lingering in 

 out-of-the-way villages in Portugal, which seem 

 directly traceable to the ancient practices of 

 polyandry and marriage by force. 



The recent discoveries by Dr. Prunieres in 

 la Lozere, of several sepulchral caverns con- 

 taining bones, in some of which stone arrow- 

 heads are still embedded, are briefly noted. 

 As the crania are all purely dolichocephalic, it 

 is a fair inference that we have here proof of a 

 struggle between the early race of Cro-Magnon 

 and a brachycephalic, neolithic race of dolmen- 

 builders who were acquainted with the use of 

 the bow, since the arrow-heads precisely re- 

 semble those found in the dolmens. 



We regret that we have no space to allude 



