222 Explorations in the Bone Cave of Ballynamintra. 
The charcoal and calcareous seams, moreover, mark successive floors or stages 
during the slow accumulation of the refuse-heap, during which man appears to have 
been the chief occupant of the cave, just as the bear had been when the stalagmite 
floor was being formed. 
The condition of the larger bones, especially of those of the Irish elk, indicates 
the human occupation of the cavity at a time when those animals lived, during the 
deposition of the grey earth ; and the chipped hammer-stones found in the same 
stratum were in all probability the very tools whereby the long bones of the 
ungulates were smashed in the longitudinal direction, and their articular extremities 
knocked off to get at the marrow. Bones of ox similarly broken are plentiful in 
Irish crannogs. 
The indentations on a few of the pieces of bone and antler may have been made 
by the teeth of large carnivorous quadrupeds. The occasional visits of such 
animals, bears for instance, during the absence of the human occupants, in the ex- 
pectation of feeding on their refuse, are indeed probable occurences, and even the 
human remains may have been mutilated by those animals, who left their own bones 
in the grey earth ; but it cannot be supposed that they would have dragged in the 
gigantic antlers of the Irish elk, many bits of which were found in the cave, and 
whose presence in so narrow a cavity, can hardly be attributed to any other agency 
than that of man. 
A noticeable feature in the bones from the grey earth, namely, theirblackened sur- 
faces and dendritic markings (as well along the faces of their fractures as elsewhere) 
may prove them of greater antiquity than the yellow bones in the brown earth above. 
This peculiar colouring was exhibited by all the human bones referable to the period 
we are treating of, except by those found in the cake of calc tufa, which encrusted 
and preserved them of a pale straw colour. 
It has been suggested that the Ivish elk’s bones may have been brought from 
other places into the cave ina fossil state after the animal had become extinct, but it 
has not been shown that the cave-men could have had any safficient reason for 
bringing in and breaking up so large a number of bones and antlers, nor why so 
many of the phalanges and small bones of the carpus and tarsus were carried into 
the cave, which is easily to be accounted for if we suppose that the limbs were 
brought there in the flesh. 
Fifth Period.—Cessation of calcareous deposits. Continued accumulation of earth, 
and occupation by man, now using carved bone implements and polished celts. 
Gradual disappearance of the Irish elk, and establishment of domesticated races of 
animals. 
There is nothing to show that between the deposition of the grey earth impreg- 
nated with calcareous matter, and the subsequent influx of brown earth, there 
was any special pause either in the accumulation of the materials or in the occupation 
of the cave by man. The Irish elk may have lasted into this period, though the 
