202 THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN 
tidal reaches of the valleys become filled up. After- 
wards, as the land rises again, the deposits are scoured out. 
All that remains of these deposits are the fragments 
preserved as terraces on the sides of the valley. At 
Paris we are far enough above sea-level to safeguard the 
valley deposits ; they may be disturbed in part, but at 
many places we may expect to find the very oldest 
deposits lying in their original condition on the lowest 
part of the valley. At Chelles, for instance, eight miles 
to the east of Paris, the ancient deposits, with typical 
specimens of the Chellean culture, rest on the floor of 
the valley of the Marne. If ancient river deposits do 
contain human or other remains, there is no place where 
they were so likely to be discovered as in the foundations 
of Paris — for no area has been so extensively excavated. 
In the year 1868 a gravel pit was still worked off the 
Avenue de Clichy, right in the heart of that part of 
Paris which lies on the north bank of the Seine. The 
problem of man's antiquity was still being debated. On 
the 1 8th of April of that year — 1868 — M. Eugene 
Bertrand, then a student in Paris, visited, as was his 
wont, the gravel pit off the Avenue de Clichy to see 
what fossil bones had come to light. The remains of 
extinct Pleistocene mammals had been found from time 
to time. On that morning he was informed that the 
labourers had exposed a human skeleton on the working 
face of the pit. M. Bertrand was an expert observer and 
familiar with the strata of the pit. The depth at which 
the skeleton lay was 5-25 m. (17*3 feet) from the 
surface. It was embedded in the fourth layer from the 
top. Fig. 70, which shows the sequence of the overlying 
strata, is taken from a paper recently published by M. 
Rutot. M. Bertrand gave an account of his discovery to 
the Anthropological Society of Paris in the same year.^ 
The antiquity and authenticity of the Clichy skeleton 
was accepted by all the authorities in France except one — 
M. G. de Mortillet, who believed that the workmen at 
the pit had deceived M. Bertrand. The clear-sighted 
1 Bull. Soc. (rAtithrop.., 1868, ser. 2, vol. iii. p. 329. 
