Page:Palæolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe.djvu/195

Rh workmen while being extracted from the cave-earth, was nearly perfect, and presented the following characters :— Flattened top, retreating forehead, large projecting orbits and prominent superciliary arches (cephalic index 75). The lower jaw was thick and robust, and had a cut-away chin. The occipital foramen was unusually elongated, and placed more posteriorly than in modern races. M. Boule, to whom the bones were submitted for scientific examination, describes the man of Chapelle-aux-Saints as having a bestial aspect, and places him in point of cranial development half-way between Pithecanthropus erectus and the lowest of present-day savages. (L'Anthropologie, xix., p. 519.)

Fossil Men of La Ferrassie.

M. Peyrony, the learned teacher of Les Eyzies-de-Tayac, while excavating in the débris in front of the prehistoric shelter of La Ferrassie (Dordogne), in the month of October 1909, came upon a human skeleton at a depth of 4 metres from the surface. The body lay in an archæological stratum of the Moustérien epoch, containing flint implements and bones of the woolly rhinoceros, bison, horse, and a few of the reindeer. The superincumbent layers were undisturbed, and consisted, first of upper Moustérien deposits with worked flints and broken bones ; next came beds rich in flint and bone implements characteristic of the Aurignacien period. The roof of the shelter had then fallen and covered these culture deposits with large blocks. Later, people took up their abode over the ruins, but habitation was altogether abandoned towards the end of the Magdalénien epoch, after which the shelter became concealed by washed-down materials. There was nothing to suggest that the locality had been disturbed till modern times, so that the skeleton must have been contemporary with the Moustérien deposits in which it lay. Before extracting the bones a group of savants was called together to examine the skeleton in situ, and to advise as to the best means of exhuming it. Among the visitors on that occasion were MM. Boule, Capitan, Cartailhac, Breuil, and the Abbé's Bouyssonie and Bardon. The body lay on the back with both legs flexed towards the right side, the left arm stretched