32 
REV. D. GATH WHITLEY, PRIMEVAL MAN IN BELGIUM. 
skull is figured by Sir Charles Lyell,* who quotes Professor 
Busk’s opinion that it could be compared with the skulls of 
modern Europeans. 
Professor Huxley also says of it : “ There is no mark of 
degradation about any part of its structure. It is, in fact, a fair 
average human skull, which might have belonged to a 
philosopher, or might have contained the thoughtless brains of 
a savage. ”f The earliest men in Europe were therefore as well 
provided with brains as are the modern Europeans, and they 
possessed faculties for using them as powerful as those of the 
Belgians of the present day. France gives precisely the same 
testimony, for one of the oldest skulls found in that country is 
known as the skull of La Truchere, the possessor of which lived 
with the lion and the rhinoceros. This splendid skull has 
a cranial capacity of 1,925 cubic centiinetres.J whereas the 
average cranial capacity of the modern Parisians is only 1,558 
cubic centimetres. Many primeval men, therefore, were much 
better provided with brains than are their successors in France 
to-day. 
M. Dupont devotes his next chapter to a lengthy description 
of the men of the Reindeer Period in Belgium. This he considers 
to be the later part of the Quaternary Era, when the Mammoth 
had disappeared from Belgium, and the reindeer had become very 
abundant. But as the Mammoth still lived in England anti 
France, this classification is merely a matter of convenience, 
and applies to Belgium alone. Both the Mammoth and the 
rhinoceros lived with the reindeer right down to the end of 
the Quaternary Period. 
The principal caverns belonging to the Reindeer Period arc 
those at Furfooz in the valley of the Lesse, not far from 
Dinant, and the most interesting of these is the cave of Frontal. 
In this cavern there was, at the end, a little sepulchral 
chamber, evidently of natural origin, and in it lay the remains 
of sixteen human skeletons, the bones of which were mingled 
in the greatest confusion. Fragments of a large earthenware 
urn, which had a round base and holes at the sides, lay with 
the skeletons. This evidently was hung from the roof of the 
sepulchral chamber, and probably contained provisions for the 
dead. Two plates of sandstone were found near by, one 
covered with strange markings which may have been intended 
* The Antiquity of Man , p. 81. 
t Man's Place in Nature , p. 156. 
1 Homines Possils et Homines Sauvages, by M. de Quatrefages, p. 77. 
