88 THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN 
How did the rock arch fall after the skull was 
there ? How did 9 to lo feet of stone blocks, 
chips, Pleistocene bones, sand, clay, etc., completely 
fill up the space near this skull ? " 
From what we have seen at Solutre, in the caves of 
Mentone and Engis, at Hailing and at Paviland, we are 
not surprised to find a skull buried beneath or near the 
hearths of Aurignacian man. We also see the most 
likely explanation of the arch of stones over the skull ; 
it appears to represent part of the grave. At Paviland 
and in the Grimaldi caves, Aurignacian man protected 
the head of the dead by an arrangement of stones. But 
where is the rest of the skeleton .'' Only the brain case 
of the skull remains — the face, the teeth, and the jaws are 
gone. Parts of the backbone were found — two vertebrae 
from the dorsal region ; some joints of the fingers were 
recovered in the neighbourhood, but not a trace of the 
long bones of the limbs. We have seen, however, that 
at certain periods hyenas frequented the cave, and their 
presence may explain the disturbed and dismembered 
skeleton. A fragment of the skull of a young child was 
also obtained in the bottom stratum. 
For three reasons, I failed at first to recognise the im- 
portance of the discovery Mr Mullins had made. The 
skull he put into my hands gave us, for the first time, 
positive evidence as to the kind of man living in England 
during the period of Aurignacian culture. My reasons 
or prejudices fell under three heads. The skull was a 
duplicate of the specimen found in the old deposits of 
the Trent at Muskam — only thirty miles to the east of 
Langwith. The Trent skull is the standard example of 
the river-bed type. 1 then shared the prevalent belief 
that the river-bed type of skull was characteristic of the 
Neolithic period, and that when we passed into that in- 
definite hinterland of time, known as the Pleistocene and 
characterised by Palseolithic forms of culture, we should 
certainly find a very different type of man. Many 
animals of that time had become extinct ; it was probable 
