112 THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN 
the men in the Dordogne valley were people of modern 
types — the Cromagnon people, tall ; the Combe Capelle, 
short. 
In the autumn of 1909, while Herr Hauser was 
exposing the Aurignacian man at Combe Capelle, M. Pey- 
rony, the schoolmaster at Les Eyzies, the picturesque cliff 
village on the Vezere, was uncovering a human skeleton 
in a stratum of Mousterian age. M. Peyrony had 
devoted many years to the exploration of the prehistoric 
sites along the valley of the Vezere, and, at the time of 
which I write, the autumn of 1909, was exploring the 
deposits at the foot of a rock-shelter at La Ferrassie 
(fig. 38), on the western side of the valley, four miles above 
the point at which the Vezere joins the Dordogne, and 
nearly twenty miles to the north of the site at which 
Herr Hauser was excavating. M. Peyrony worked in con- 
junction with Professor Capitan of the College de France, 
Paris. The deposits at the rock-shelter showed the 
following strata^ (see fig. 40). The upper stratum, 4 feet 
in depth, was made up of soil, with blocks of limestone 
which had fallen from time to time from the face of the 
sheltering rock. Then followed three strata of Aurig- 
nacian age — representing three phases of the culture of 
that time — forming a thickness of 6 feet. At a depth of 
10 feet came the deposit which particularly interests us 
here — a deposit of the Mousterian period. It was about 
20 inches in thickness, and contained the typical flint 
implements and chips of the period, with broken 
fragments of the bones of reindeer, bison, and horse — 
remnants of ancient feasts. In the lower part of this 
stratum a skeleton came to light, lying on its back with 
the lower limbs strongly bent. There were no evident 
signs of grave furniture or of deliberate burial, but we 
may be certain, seeing that a complete skeleton was 
represented and that the strata had been the site of human 
habitation, that the body had not been entombed by 
1 For an account of this station, see Revue Scientifique, 1910, vol. xlviii. 
p. 193 ; Bull, et Mnii. Soc. d'Aiithrop. Paris., 19 10, ser. 6, vol. i. p. 48. 
The skeletons are also described by Professor Boule (see reference, p. 117). 
