TRACKS OF A RELIGIOUS BELIEF OY PRIMEVAL MAN. 127 



tlu 4 Tertiary Era down to the recent deposits. Thus it also 

 includes the Neolithic Age as well as the Bronze and Iron Ages, 

 lit >nce the term as applied to the men who lived with the 

 extinct mammalia is unsatisfactory. 



The hest and simplest course to take is to consider the 

 Palaeolithic Age to be synonymous with the Pleistocene Period 

 in geology, and to include in it everything between the close of 

 the Pliocene Era and the beginning of the Neolithic Age. I 

 know no better definition than this, and in this paper 1 shall 

 consider the terms Palaeolithic and Pleistocene as synonymous. 

 Palaeolithic Man, therefore, is Pleistocene Man, neither less nor 

 more. 



The problem, therefore, which lies before us for investigation 

 is, whether the men of the Pleistocene Era possessed a religion, 

 and if so, what was its character. 



Now, it has been emphatically denied that the men of the 

 First Stone Age possessed any religion. M. de Mortillet, the 

 talented French archaeologist, has, in one of his works,* written 

 an elaborate section to show that Palaeolithic Man had no religion. 

 There are, he maintains, not the slightest traces of any religious 

 feasts, relics, or customs, any where to be found in the Palaeolithic 

 Age, and he draws a picture of the happiness of the earliest 

 men who were simple admirers of the beauties of nature, and 

 were not disturbed by any of those terrors of imagination 

 which he declares religion is always creating ! A whole series 

 of facts and discoveries can now be laid before the student to 

 show how utterly false is this opinion. Even if among the 

 human relics of the Palaeolithic Age no material evidences of 

 religious belief could be discovered it does not follow that these 

 earliest men possessed no religion. Every student of anthro- 

 pology knows perfectly well that many savage races existing 

 at the present day have neither priests, nor temples, nor vest- 

 ments, nor religious implements, and yet these savages have 

 religions and often elaborate theologies. The extinct Tas- 

 manians are a case in point.f They possessed no temples, no 

 organised priesthood, and no religious ceremonies. Nevertheless 

 they believed in a Supreme God, with minor deities ; they 

 practised prayer, and sang religious hymns, and they believed 

 in a future life. Exactly the same may be said of the Australians, 



* Le Prehistorique Antiquite de V Homme, pp. 474-476. 



t The most elaborate account of the Tasmanians that I know is found 

 in Hommes Fossiles et Homines Sauvaqes, by M. de Quatrefages, pp. 292- 

 40a. 



