Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/701

Rh caves were described by Schmerling, in his admirable but neglected works, some thirty-five years ago.

The Neanderthal cave has become celebrated. An entire human skeleton of good size and proportions, save its ape-like, low-browed skull, was discovered here in 1856, a full account of which was given by Dr. Fuhlrott. This discovery, since become the occasion of so much discussion, indicates quite clearly the existence in that remote period of a race of men of marked characteristics, and in some peculiarities closely resembling certain now-living Australian tribes. The skull is not nearly of so high a type as that from the Engis cave just mentioned.

Of exceptional interest, also, is the burial-place at Aurignac, in the department of Haute-Garonne, in Southern France. It was accidentally discovered in 1852, but first scientifically described in 1861, by Lartet. There, in a cave closed by a vertical slab of stone, which was itself hidden by accumulated stone fragments dropped from the cliff above, were found no less than seventeen human skeletons, mingled with bones of the cave-bear, cave-lion, mammoth, rhinoceros, giant-elk, and other now-extinct diluvial animals, weapons of wrought-flint and implements of bone, stag's-horn, and ivory articles probably buried with the dead for use in the life beyond the grave; in the belief of which Sir Charles Lyell, in his work on the "Antiquity of Man," quotes as pertinent the well-known lines from Schiller's "Nadowessian Death-Song:"

In exact agreement with one of these lines, the thigh-bones of the cave-bear were actually found laid beside some of the skeletons of this cave. Not a trace of pottery was found here. Under the débris mentioned as lying just outside of the door of the cave were ashes, charcoal, and bones of the species found inside, all suggestive of the notion that the funeral-feast may have been here celebrated. This heap