io8 THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN 
is the more strange, seeing that remains of the animals 
of the period are well preserved in the brick earths which 
contain Mousterian flints. Two forms of elephants 
occurred with him in the Thames valley — the mammoth 
and a form nearly allied to the African elephant {E. 
antiquus) ; three forms of the rhinoceros ; the musk 
ox, and other mammalian species associated with a cold 
climate.^ " In the brick earths of the middle terrace 
of the Thames," writes Mr Hinton,^ "we meet with 
evidence of the invasion of England by swarms of 
mammals which can only have come from Siberia and 
Eastern Europe — the lemming, numerous voles, the 
reindeer, and the saiga antelope." At some part of the 
Mousterian period— perhaps during its whole extent — 
England was part of the Continent ; otherwise such an 
invasion of mammals which were then new to this 
country could not have taken place. We see, therefore, 
that Mousterian man and his culture could have entered 
England by land. 
To study the men of the Mousterian times, we must 
transfer the scene of our inquiry to the Continent — 
preferably to that part of France we have already visited 
in search of the men of the later Palaeolithic periods, 
the region drained by the Dordogne and its tributaries. 
A little over sixty miles from Bordeaux, the Dordogne 
receives a small southern tributary, the Couze. In the 
face of the terraced limestone clifF or hill on one side of 
this valley, at a site known as Combe Capelle (fig. 38), 
a Swiss archaeologist, Herr O. Hauser, made an important 
discovery — one which serves exceedingly well to introduce 
us to the Mousterian period of France. 
In the opening months of 1909, he commenced a 
systematic exploration of a terrace, almost on the summit 
of one side of the valley, which was known to yield 
numerous Palaeolithic flints, and suspected to have served 
as a rock-shelter for ancient man. His excavation at the 
foot of the sheltering rock exposed the following strata 
1 Messrs Hinton and Kennard, Proc. Gcol. Assoc, 1905, vol. xix. p. 83. 
- Proc. Geol. Assoc, 1907, vol. xx. p. 53. 
