Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/257

] and the other caves of the Vezère. They therefore hold that in this cave there is proof of the survival of the Palæolithic man of the caves into Neolithic times. It seems to me that the evidence ought to be read the other way, and that it tends to show that the "race of Cro-Magnon," which I have already given my reasons for believing to be later than the Palæolithic, really belongs to the Neolithic age (see pp. 206-7).

The fact that caves were largely used as sepulchres in the Neolithic age renders it necessary to use extreme caution in assigning any interments to the Palæolithic dwellers in caves without unmistakable evidence. This seems to me to be wanting in most of the examples generally accepted, which I have classified under the head of doubtful in my work on Cave-Hunting. For the reasons there given the antiquity of the Neanderthal skull is doubtful, while the interments in Cro-Magnon are seen in the section (Fig. 74) to be later than the Palæolithic accumulation below. The so-called "fossil man of Mentone" may be referred to the same date as the polished stone axe of the Neolithic age found in the cave, and now preserved in the museum at St. Germain. The pottery found in the caves of Engis and Trou de Frontal in Belgium, and in those of Aurignac, Bruniquel, and Bize, is identical with the Neolithic pottery, and may therefore be taken to indicate the date of the interments.

Those experienced in digging caves know how very difficult it is to separate the contents of deposits of two different ages lying together in the same place, and