52 
THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN 
with which Lartet illustrated his discovery. When the 
debris which hid the cave was removed, the opening 
was found to be closed by a great vertical slab of stone. 
Before Lartet's arrival, the human skeletons seen piled 
up within the cave (fig. 22) had been given a Christian 
burial by order of the Mayor. We now know, although 
Lartet was not then aware of the fact, that the pile of 
skeletons — representing at least seventeen individuals of 
various ages — were in reality the remains of Neolithic 
people. It was the Neolithic men who set up the slab 
at the entrance and used the cave as a sepulchre, 
Slab at former entrance 
FALLEN De'bRIS 
S^^^^ OLD FLOOR ON TERRACE 
CAVE FLOOR 
NEOLITHIC BURIALS 
Fk;. 22. — A section of the cave explored by Lartet, near Aurignac, in i860. 
a custom of the period. But when Lartet came to ex- 
plore the floor of the cave — 2 to 3 feet in thickness — he 
found it to abound in evidences of human habitation, and 
to contain the remains of extinct animals, which were 
charred, cut, and artificially broken, showing that man not 
only lived at the same time as extinct animals, but actually 
used them as sources of his food supply. He found 
remains of the cave-bear, the cave-lion, the cave-hyena, 
the mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, the wild pig, the 
Irish elk, the bison ; and also remains of animals which 
live in our time. He found, further, as will be seen from 
his drawing, that the strata of the floor extended out to 
