DISCOVERY OF PRE-NEOLITHIC MAN 57 
mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, the cave-bear, the cave- 
lion, the cave-hyena disappeared ; the reindeer became 
the characteristic animal in Europe in the closing phases 
of the Palaeolithic period. 
Aurignac, we have seen, is situated on a tributary of 
the Garonne — the Ariege. A neighbouring tributary, the 
Arize, issuing from the Pyrenees to the east of the 
Ariege, pierces a spur of limestone rocks, near the village 
of Mas d'Azil, forming a great tunnel or subterranean 
gallery, 500 yards in length (fig. 38). When the public 
road, which follows the tunnel made by the stream, was 
being repaired, the strata on the banks of this subterranean 
stream revealed the hearths and implements of ancient 
man. In 1887, M, Edouard Piette, a magistrate, who 
spent his leisure hours and his income most liberally 
in advancing our knowledge of ancient man, began a 
systematic exploration of the strata in the recesses of the 
cavern of Mas d'Azil, and discovered cultures which mark 
the transition from Palaeolithic to Neolithic times. In 
1895 he published^ a section (fig. 24) showing the various 
strata which are piled one above the other on the western 
bank of the Arize, as it issues from the tunnel. The 
uppermost, and therefore latest stratum, is situated 
1 3-60 m. (44 feet) above the level of the stream. The two 
upper deposits, composed of black clay with intermingled 
debris, amounting to a depth of 5 feet, were formed 
between the closing phase of the Neolithic period and 
the time of the Roman occupation, for they contained 
abundant traces of the civilisation which came and went 
during that interval of time — some two thousand years. 
The third stratum, counting from the surface downwards, 
is little more than a foot and a half in thickness, and, 
composed of a laminated assortment of differently coloured 
clays, brings us well within the Neolithic period, for the 
objects of culture are such as are found in the kitchen- 
middens. The fourth stratum reveals the transition 
culture, the one now distinguished as Azilian. The 
1 "Etudes d'ethnographie prehistorique," IJAni/iropologte, 1895, 
vol. vi. p. 276. 
