PRE-MOUSTERIAN MAN 205 
I have cited only this one instance from the ancient 
valley deposits of Paris, because it is not necessary to 
prove more than one case — one instance of a modern 
type of man who lived before the Mousterian period, 
the heyday of Neanderthal man in Europe. At Crenelle, 
on the south bank of the Seine, in Paris, human 
remains of the same type have been found at an even 
greater depth, and others of a different type at more 
superficial horizons. There is no doubt that even in the 
earliest Palaeolithic periods — one hundred thousand or 
even one hundred and fifty thousand years ago — the 
culture and the people in the valley of the Seine and in 
the valley of the Thames were very much alike. 
From Paris our present inquiry takes us along the 
valley of the Rhone towards the north of Italy. At 
Lyons it is well to break our journey and visit Le Puy, 
situated on the upper waters of the Loire in a mountainous 
country to the north of the Cevennes. In the museum 
of the town is preserved the frontal bone of a human 
skull, which was found embedded in a volcanic matrix. 
The history of the specimen is well known. An account 
of it was published in 1844, but the fullest description 
is that given by Dr Sauvage in 1872.^ In 1859, Sir 
Charles Lyell visited Le Puy, and examined the volcanic 
deposits on Mount Denise, where the specimen was 
found. The actual site of discovery is situated in a 
vineyard terrace near the summit of a hill. The 
matrix in which the specimen is embedded guarantees its 
antiquity. The frontal bone is that of a person who 
lived before the last volcanic eruption which occurred in 
Central France. In the same deposit as the skull are 
found the remains of the cave-hyena and hippopotamus. 
The date of the eruption and of the skull is therefore 
mid-Pleistocene — about the same age as the Bury St 
Edmunds fragment. Perhaps it may be older. Its 
interest for us is that although so ancient it differs in no 
essential particular from the frontal bone of a modern, 
skull (fig. 71). From its dimensions one infers that it 
^ "L'homme fossile de Denise," Rev. cTAnthrop., 1872, vol i. p. 289. 
