Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/270

242 as to race is of considerable weight. It is still further strengthened by the identity of art. The articles found in the caves of Britain, Belgium, France, or Switzerland differ scarcely more from those used in West Georgia than the latter from those of Greenland or Melville Peninsula.

From these considerations it may be gathered that the Eskimos are probably the representatives of the Cave-men, and protected within the Arctic Circle from those causes by which they have been driven from Europe and Asia. They stand at the present day wholly apart from all other living races, and are cut off from all both by the philologer and the craniologist. Unaccustomed to war themselves, they were probably driven from Europe and Asia by other tribes in the same manner as within the last century they have been driven farther north by the attacks of the Red Indian.

What is the relation of the Cave-men to the peoples who succeeded them in Europe? Did they disappear at the close of the Pleistocene age without leaving any traces behind, or were they absorbed into other races invading Europe in the Neolithic age? The answer to these questions will depend upon the view which we take of the age of the human skeletons in the caves of Cro-Magnon, Frontal, Furfooz, and Mentone. If we follow those lately published in the Crania Ethnica, and the Matériaux by MM. Quatrefages, Hamy, and Louis Lartet,