Page:Palæolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe.djvu/262

202 made great progress, both in the acquisition of manipulative skill and in the development of their mental faculties, proofs of which we have in their handicraft works, and in the gradual increase in their brain-cases. These were the trophies of their struggle for existence during the adverse conditions which obtained in Europe under the chilling influence of the last glacial period. But, sad to relate, the splendid attainments thus acquired were soon afterwards rendered almost nugatory by the inscrutable decrees of Nature, which again changed the physical elements of the environment, to such an extent that their old hunting-grounds were no longer suitable for the life habits of the reindeer and the other big game on which they depended for their livelihood. The consequence was that the northern fauna gradually died out in Central Europe, and left the highly equipped Palæolithic hunters to their own devices. The problem they had now to face was to make bricks without straw. We shall elsewhere see (Chapter XI.) that they solved this problem by turning their experience and mental endowments into new channels, where they devised other methods of subsistence so important to humanity as to revolutionise life on the globe.

Judging from their osseous remains and. a few sidelights gathered from collateral sources, these early troglodytes must have had a strong likeness to the anthropoid apes of the present day. Their later descendants, who became no mean artists, depict themselves as being covered over with hair, and, of course, the earlier races would also be a fortiori hairy. With large orbits, overhanging eyebrows, small, narrow, and retreating forehead, thick heavy jaws, prognathic profile, and short muscular limbs, these hairy representatives of the Neanderthal-Spy type of humanity would form an ugly contrast to the modern inhabitants of Europe. No wonder that some of our sentimental friends would like to ignore the inevitable inference that these simian-like creatures were our actual forefathers. It is probable that successive generations would possess brain-cases which, in point of development, would be intermediate between the typical Neanderthal-Spy and Magdalénien skulls. As a matter of fact such skulls have turned up. The Spy skull (No. i) was associated with