Page:Palæolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe.djvu/227

Rh both here and in the Grotte du Prince showed that the lowest, and therefore the oldest, represented a time when a fauna peculiar to a warm climate prospered at the Baousse-Rousse. Reindeer bones appeared about the middle strata in the Grotte du Prince, and on a level with the skeletons in the former, thus proving that during the reindeer period man did not abandon his dead, but gave it a ceremonious burial.

The Grotte des Enfants seemed to have been inhabited almost without interruption, and contained several skeletons at different levels and of different ages. In its lowest deposits neither E. antiquus nor the hippopotamus was represented, only Rhinoceros merckii, and hence it is surmised that this animal survived the two former in that part of the world. The negroid skeletons belonged therefore to the middle Pleistocene period and were contemporary with the Rhinoceros merckii, but anterior to the Cro-Magnon man found in the same cave. No implements of the coup-de-poing type, nor bone objects of the artistic reindeer period of France, have been found in any of the Grimaldi caves.

According to Cartailhac all the skeletons, except the two negroids (race de Grimaldi), belonged to the Cro-Magnon race, and were all true burials of the Palæolithic period. The first man who came to the caves used Moustérien implements of quartz or limestone. M. Boule has shown that the lower strata in the Grotte du Prince, which contained some of these implements, also contained remains of Elephas antiquus, Hippopotamus, and Rhinoceros merckii, animals characteristic of the lower Quaternary period. The contents of the middle and upper strata indicated a change both in the climate and fauna. The cold period came on, and along with it its corresponding fauna mammoth, woolly-haired rhinoceros, and reindeer but the Moustérien type of industries still remained unchanged. (C.A.P., 1906, p. 68.)

The Grotte des Enfants has furnished an abundance of worked objects of flint, jasper, and bone, which Cartailhac characterises as Aurignacien. The deposits in all the caves are Palæolithic to the top, the Neolithic, which appear quite on the surface, being quite insignificant.