Page:Antiquity of Man as Deduced from the Discovery of a Human Skeleton.djvu/33

Rh Prior to the "marsh-level" (Section of Strata, facing p. 3) there occurred geological changes—successive sinkings and risings of the earth’s surface—in the locality in question, at intervals admitting of growths and decays of trees and bog-plants, from which an inference may be reasonably drawn of a period of past time which, from evidences above submitted, may be regarded as "Palæolithic."

Evidence of the "Antiquity of Man," deduced from the discovery of his bones in caves, was submitted to the Royal Society on the 9th June, 1864, and published in the 'Philosophical Transactions' for the year 1869. In the cave at Bruniquel, on the bank of the Aveyron, parts of a human skeleton, including the skull, were exposed in a stalagmitic breccia, 4 feet below the horizontal floor of stalagmite, of which breccia a mass, of the density of building-stone, including the skull, was detached, under my supervision, in 1863, and is now in the Palæontological Gallery of the British Museum of Natural History, Cromwell Road. In a recess of the, of old, inhabited cave, at a depth of 5 feet 2 inches from the upper surface of the stalagmite, and in a block of stalagmitic breccia of stony hardness, a second human skull, mutilated in the labour of detachment of the matrix, was discovered with other parts of a human skeleton. At every foot of depth of the breccia of the cavern were found scattered implements of flint and bone—the latter chiefly supplied by antlers of reindeer (Cervus tarandus). Evidences of fires blackened the breccia more or less to the depth of 6 feet. The mammals which had been cooked for food, every bone of