CHAPTER IX 
MEN OF THE lOO-FOOT TERRACE 
Our journey round Europe, described in the previous 
chapters, has led to the conclusion that it was inhabited, 
during the long Mousterian period, by a people altogether 
different from ourselves. When, therefore, we set out to 
seek for pre-Mousterian man, we are naturally on the 
tiptoe of expectation to see what kind of being we shall 
find. Was modern man evolved in some distant part of 
the world, reaching Europe for the first time in the 
Aurignacian period ? Or was he the original inhabitant 
of Europe, being ousted during the time of the Mousterian 
culture by an intrusion or invasion of a foreign and 
strange species of man {Homo neanderthalensis) ? It is 
clear that we must know the past history of the whole 
world before we can answer those questions with certainty. 
Meantime, we must rely on such facts as we now possess. 
We are feeling our way into a very distant period — one 
which lies fifty thousand years or more behind the 
present. Naturally, the further back we go the greater 
become our difficulties and our doubts. Geological 
records, like historical documents, suffer by the lapse of 
time — they become mutilated, destroyed, or completely 
swept away. Seen in a distant perspective, a long period 
of time appears to us a short one. 
The culture of the period we now enter — the Acheulean 
— is sparsely represented in the floor strata of caves and 
rock-shelters. At La Ferrassie, it will be remembered 
(fig. 40, p. 1 13), the stratum lying under the Mousterian 
contained objects of the older culture — the Acheulean. 
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