Page:Palæolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe.djvu/119

Rh and the cave of Le Moustier, contained a few implements of the coup-de-poing type. Hence these and probably some other stations are to be assigned to the close of the interglacial warm period, viz., that which succeeded the maximum Ice Age which deposited the boulder clay in England. It was then that the caverns of Europe were for the first time utilised by man as regular places of abode, owing to the increasing coldness of the environment. The subsequent glacial period, although of Arctic severity, was not attended by such a large deposition of ice as the previous one, because the atmosphere contained less moisture; and it was during it that the reindeer-hunters of the Dordogne and other contemporary stations developed their remarkable civilisation. That the Reindeer Age of France was long subsequent to the maximum ice advance, is proved by the number of Palæolithic stations of the Magdalénien epoch which have been discovered within areas formerly occupied by glaciers. Thus, the stations of Kesslerloch, Freudenthal, Schweizersbild, and Schussenried are within regions which at one time had been covered by the Rhine glacier; while the stations of Veyrier, in Switzerland, near Geneva, Scé, near Villeneuve, Balme and Béthenas (Isère), are within the area formerly occupied by the Rhone glacier. The same remarks are applicable to some of the stations in the vicinity of the Pyrenees. A few of the above-named stations will now be described, by way of showing the complete parallelism between their relics and those of the Magdalénien epoch.

Veyrier, in Savoy.

At the foot of Mont Salève, near the village of Veyrier (Haute-Savoie), and not far from the Swiss frontier, some caverns formed by immense fallen rocks were recognised, as early as 1835, to have been a station of prehistoric people. M. Thioly (Revue Savoisienne, 1868; Mémoires de l'Académie de Savoie, 2nd ser., tome xii.) excavated one of these, and it was found to measure 8 metres long, 5 metres broad, and 2 metres high. The débris of habitation formed a blackish layer 0.40 metres thick, and in it were found knives, scrapers, and pointers of flint (Fig. 15, Nos. 8 to 11), hammer-stones of Alpine pebbles, some perforated shells and teeth (Nos. 6 and 7),