MOUSTERIAN PERIOD 117 
body had been laid on its back, head to the west, and 
with knees, thighs, and elbows flexed — the contracted 
posture. The head was protected by an arrangement of 
flat stones, near which was part of the skeleton of the leg 
and foot of an ancient type of ox. Other stones were 
placed round the body, between it and the sides of the 
depression in the floor — regarded by the abbes as a 
grave purposely dug for the body. Numerous beauti- 
fully worked flints of the Mousterian period lay near the 
skeleton. The Mousterian stratum over the gravel was 
intact ; the cave had been occupied in the Mousterian 
period long after the body had been laid to rest. Even 
at this early period, a species or kind of man, not directly 
related to modern races, was burying the dead and 
furnishing them with an outfit as provision for a long 
journey. The human mind, even then, held hopes and 
beliefs as to what happened after death. Clearly the 
Mousterian period and Neanderthal man do not represent 
the human dawn. Still, they belong to that remote date 
at which the middle terrace of the Thames valley — on 
which so much of central London is now built — was 
being formed by the action of the river. 
The discovery at La Chapelle-aux-Saints marks a stage 
in the progress of our knowledge of ancient man. We 
see, in 1908, that the methods employed in the explora- 
tion of caves have become exact and systematic, replacing 
the somewhat haphazard efforts of an earlier period. 
The splendid memoir^ written by M. Marcelin Boule, 
Professor of Palaeontology in the National Museum of 
Natural History, Paris, where the La Chapelle man now finds 
a home, represents the most thorough and exact investiga- 
tion ever made of an ancient human skeleton. The man 
of La Chapelle-aux-Saints was worth .all the pains which 
Professor Boule has bestowed on him. The skull was 
broken, parts of the face were defective, some parts of the 
skeleton were missing, but such blanks were supplied by 
the two skeletons found by MM. Capitan and Peyrony 
at La Ferrassie. Professor Boule estimates the age of 
1 Annales de Paleontolo^ie, 191 1, vol. xi. pp. 1-270, 16 plates. 
