Page:Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man.djvu/204

186 of them being also burnt. The spongy parts, moreover, were wanting, having been eaten off and gnawed after they were broken, the work, according to M. Lartet, of hyænas, the bones and coprolites of which were plentifully mixed with the cinders, and dispersed through the overlying soil d. These beasts of prey are supposed to have prowled about the spot and fed on such relics of the funeral feasts as remained after the retreat of the human visitors, or during the intervals between successive funeral ceremonies which accompanied the interment of the corpses within the sepulchre. Many of the bones were also streaked, as if the flesh had been scraped off by a flint instrument.

Among the various proofs that the bones were fresh when brought to the spot, it is remarked that those of the herbivora not only bore the marks of having had the marrow extracted and having afterwards been gnawed and in part devoured as if by carnivorous beasts, but that they had also been acted upon by fire (and this was especially noticed in one case of a cave-bear's bone), in such a manner as to show that they retained in them at the time all their animal matter.

Among other quadrupeds which appear to have been eaten at the funeral feasts, and of which the bones occurred among the ashes, were those of a young Rhinoceros tichorhinus, the bones of which had been split open for the extraction of the marrow, and gnawed by a beast of prey at both extremities.

Outside of the great slab of stone forming the door, not one human bone occurred; inside of it there were found, mixed with loose soil, the remains of as many as seventeen human individuals, besides some works of art and bones of animals. We know nothing of the arrangement of these bones when they were first broken into. M. Lartet infers, from the small height and dimensions of the vault, that the bodies were bent down upon themselves in a squatting attitude, a posture known to have been adopted in most of the sepulchres of primitive times; and he has so represented them