DISCOVERY OF PRE-NEOLITHIC MAN 
51 
gium with the extinct animals of the Pleistocene period 
was reproduced in the Neolithic period, and still abounds 
in modern times. When Professor Boyd Dawkins wrote 
his classical work on Cave Hunting^ he was not con- 
vinced on the evidence produced by Schmerling that 
the skull was contemporaneous with the fossil animals. 
Lately, my friend, Dr Rutot, has again, in company 
with Professor Fraipont, examined the Engis skull, and 
he, too, is inclined to place it in the list of doubtful 
specimens.^ It is true, as we shall see presently, that 
people of the Neolithic period did use caves as sepulchres, 
but there is no instance of Neolithic man having du^ a 
hole in the hard breccia of a cave floor and buried his 
dead at a depth of 5 feet : Schmerling has placed it on 
record that the breccia was intact, and therefore we must 
admit that the river-bed type of skull was already evolved 
in the Palceolithic period. 
The discovery which cleared away all doubts as to the 
great antiquity of man — which carried home the convic- 
tion that he was contemporary with extinct animals — 
takes us to the year i860. The discoverer was Edouard 
Lartet, then aged fifty-nine. He had, in his early years, 
forsaken law for geology, and latterly had been caught in 
the passion for cave exploration. The year i860 found, 
him visiting the caves of Southern France, particularly 
those situated in the departments lying among the 
northern spurs of the Pyrenees. We have to deal with 
two of these particular departments of France — Haute 
Garonne and Ariege, drained by rapid-running tributaries 
of the Garonne. Lartet's excursion took him to the 
village of Aurignac, in Haute Garonne (see fig. 38). 
Near by the town is a little hill ; on the side of the 
hill a cave had been discovered, buried beneath a mass 
of debris, which had fallen from the face of a cliff. 
Apparently in ancient times the cave had opened on the 
face of the clifF. In fig. 22, I reproduce the drawing 
' Cave Jlinifing, MacmiUan & Co.. 1874. 
- " Coup d'ceil synthetique sur Tepoque des cavernes,"' Bull, dc la Soc. 
Beige de Geologie, 1909, vol. xxiii. p. 227. 
