REV. D. GATH WHITLEY, PRIMEVAL MAN IN BELGIUM. 35 
that traders were in the habit of conveying them from the 
banks of the Loire and the Seine to the cave-dwellers of the 
Belgian rivers, and he refers to the case of a tribe of South 
American Indians, who, according to MM. Boulin and 
Boussingault, traded in stones for implements with the natives 
who inhabit the marshy banks of the Orinoco. He is probably 
correct, and this proves how extensive were the commercial 
relations of the earliest men. In Southern France we find 
precisely the same thing ; for the caves of the Dordogne contain 
numerous fragments of bright minerals, shells and. amber, 
which were used as ornaments and must have been brought, 
some from the Atlantic and some from the Mediterranean 
coast of France, and some from regions still more distant.* 
It would appear, therefore, to have been in the days of the 
Mammoth and rhinoceros, an elaborate system of trade amongst 
the earliest men in Western Europe. Trade, barter and 
exchange, were carried on over vast areas, and a complicated 
commercial system was in operation all over France, and the 
low countries to the north, similar to that which prevailed in 
North America previous to the Spanish conquest. M. Dupont 
maintains also, that as Western Europe was at that time 
covered with dense forests full of wild and savage beasts, the 
trade between Belgium and Southern France must have been 
principally carried on by means of the rivers, then much 
larger than now. These were navigated by the indefatigable 
traders of primitive times by means of rafts and canoes. All 
these discoveries strongly establish the high intellectual 
character of Primeval Man. How can we for a moment believe 
that the men who possessed such splendid skulls, and such large 
brains ; who dressed in cloth and carefully-prepared skins ; who 
adorned themselves with paint, necklaces and ornaments, and 
who reverently buried their dead in the belief of a life beyond 
the grave, were brutal and degraded savages ? The idea is 
impossible. 
Efforts have been made to identify the cave-men of France 
and Belgium with races now living, but the attempts have not 
been particularly successful. M. Dupont considers that the 
Troglodytes of the Lesse were of the Mongolian race and 
allied to the Eskimos, but that the family is extinct. Professor 
Boyd Dawkins goes much further, and actually identifies the 
cave-men with the present Eskimo, f causing them, in his 
* The Human Species , by M. de Quatrefages, p. 326. 
t Early Man in Britain . p. 242. 
