Page:Palæolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe.djvu/342

256 due to the fact that their characteristic differences had not then attracted attention, and consequently they had not been recognised as belonging to a different civilisation.

Another point of uncertainty about these harpoons is whether or not the flat specimens were exclusively made of red-deer horn. The butt-end of one, with an oval perforation, and described as made of reindeer-horn, was found in La Madeleine (Relig. Aquitanicæ, p. 160, fig. 57) ; another, described as flat, with a round hole at the butt, and made of reindeer-horn, is recorded from the Grotte de Vache and figured in Musée Préhistorique (fig. 187). If, therefore, it be true that some of these flat harpoons were made of reindeer-horn it only adds to the importance of this link between the two civilisations, as it proves that when the scarcity of the reindeer material was increasing the old Palæolithic people gradually resorted to the horn of the red-deer as a substitute for making their harpoons, though inferior in quality to the former, and that they had already altered the form to suit the nature of the new material.

The flint implements found in the Reilhac settlement include types common to all the Palæolithic epochs, as well as others which are considered to belong to the Neolithic Age. Among the relics characteristic of the latter are polished stone axes, and the deer-horn sockets with which they were fastened into the wooden handle, grain-bruisers, and fragments of pottery. Curiously enough a number of perforated phalangeal bones of the horse and ox, formerly supposed by Lartet and others to be whistles, are also noted. The station would thus appear to have been occupied with little interruption from Palæolithic to Neolithic times.

(3) The Bone Caves of Ojcow.

The caves described by Professor Römer of Breslau in the vicinity of Ojcow (Poland) occur in a range of oolitic hills extending some 15 miles to the north-west of Cracow. They are nine in number, and all have been more or less explored, with the result that they have furnished clear evidence not only of the contemporaneity of man with some of the later of the extinct mammalia, but also of the continuity of human occupancy