Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/258

230 mingled together by previous diggers, as well as by the burrowing animals. There seems to me no case on record up to the present time which establishes the fact that the Cave-men were in the habit of burying their dead so securely as to keep out the hyænas. The fragmentary remains of the human frame left in the refuse-heaps may reasonably be taken to imply that disregard for the bodies of the dead which is so conspicuous among the modern Eskimos.

In the course of this chapter we have seen that the river-drift implements in the caves of Cresswell Crags, of Kent's Hole, and of the Grotte de l'Eglise, are found in the strata below those with the implements of the Cave-men, and consequently that the River-drift men lived in Britain and France before the Cave-men. We have also noted that the latter are in a different stage of culture from that which was enjoyed by the former, the implements being not only better, but, taken as a group, of a different kind, although some simple forms, such as the flake, scraper, and hammer-stone, are common to both. How are they related to each other? Is the culture of the latter the outcome of the development of that of the former? Or is it to be viewed as having been introduced into Europe by a totally different race? In dealing with these difficult questions several important considerations must be weighed. First, the absence of the higher types of implement in the camping-places of the River-drift men cannot be accounted for on the ground that they are smaller, or that they are partly composed of bone and antler, which are more perishable