Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 23.djvu/776

756, which was the product of the exigencies of a climate gradually growing more severe. At the beginning, the animals, plants, and air were those of Northern Africa, and the conditions for human existence were of the best. The Chellean man lived in the open air, or possibly under light shelters, but did not resort to caves, and was not accustomed to bury his dead. These facts explain the abundance of instruments of that age in alluvial deposits, their absence from the caves, which served as places of refuge in the following ages, and the extreme rarity of bones. The great numbers of the implements found in different parts of France give the idea of an active population of considerable density, whose peaceful extension was not interrupted during long ages by any unfortunate event. The race may be traced by means of identical instruments, except that the materials vary according to the resources of the different countries, in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Algeria, and Egypt, and even at the Cape of Good Hope; and, in North America, in the valley of the Delaware, New Jersey, and the Bridger Basin, Wyoming. The uniformity of the instruments is a most striking feature. Always the same in design, they were made to serve for more than one use—a merit, probably, in the eyes of the men who chipped them out, but a sign of inferiority in the race which, for thousands of years, knew how to make these and no other tools. They were not, according to M. de Mortillet, real hatchets, as they have been commonly called, but simply a tool (coup de poing), to be held bodily in the hand, and used according to the need, as hatchet, knife, chisel, or gouge. The weapon of the race was a club, and of that all traces have, of course, vanished.

The slow development of the division of labor seems to have been reserved for the following age, that of Moustier, which joins closely upon the Chellean age, and, while less perfect in details, evidences more skill and rapidity in processes, and a more utilitarian spirit. Its implements are more varied and specialized in their forms. The climate had become more severe; the glaciers were approaching their greatest extension; and "Moustierian man" was obliged to take refuge in caverns, where the relics of his industry are as frequent as those that occur scattered over the soil. In other respects the race and epoch of Moustier seem to have been simply a prolongation of those of Chelles. Only man, under pressure of new necessities, experienced wants he had not previously known. He had to be more industrious. Large animals had become more numerous; he had to arm himself for defense, and became a hunter.

As no pains were taken to give the dead a permanent burial, we can not expect to find many bones of these most ancient races. Possibly their dead were exposed, as those of some Indian tribes are now, and that would be an additional reason why their remains should have utterly disappeared. Leaving out the doubtful relics, M. de Mortillet finds only a very few bones that can possibly be ascribed to the