Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/21

Rh lowlands of Europe, proves the continuance of the severity of climate; we are still dealing with the Ice period, or probably with a second ice-period, as many infer from the peculiarities of the more recent drift. Of course the retreat of the glaciers of this later Ice period—glaciers apparently less in mass and extent than those of the former one—would produce fresh floods and all the phenomena previously explained as the results of such floods.

Men were still troglodytes, but also to some extent lived out-of-doors in so-called stations at the foot of sheltering cliffs. The domestication of animals was not yet practised, even the reindeer being used for food only, though this is disputed by some writers. Of the use of metals there is not a trace. This age is shown by every indication to be separated from our own, the historic age, by not less than 10,000 years, as to its initial point, at least, for some writers believe it to have been continued until the beginning of historic times.

The knives, axes, and spear-heads, are still rough-worked, but more carefully and skillfully than before. The material for them was brought from considerable distances; those found in Belgium, for instance, being made from flint-bowlders found in the chalk of the Champagne district. Very many kinds of implements were in use. The pieces of iron-stone found among them were probably used there, as they are now, by many tribes, for painting the face and figure. Bright stones, shells, and the teeth of animals, were perforated and strung into necklaces and bracelets—personal vanity thus anciently asserting itself. Skins and furs were used for clothing. Needles of horn and bone, and pieces of horn and stones manifestly used for smoothing down the seams, are often met with. The dead were buried at full length in caves.

The station at Solutré, department of Saône-et-Loire, is rich in memorials of this remote age, such as carefully-wrought articles of flint, and bones of the species named, especially of the reindeer; and near by is a burial-cave in which are several perfectly-preserved skeletons, with skulls of the Mongol type, according to Dr. Pruner Bey. In this instance the bodies of the dead were inclosed between flag-stones.

Pottery had now come into use, but it was roughly made by hand and unburnt. The beginnings of art are now met, as in pictures upon bone, ivory, and slate, of the mammoth, aurochs, horse, etc., and even sketches of the human figure. In some of these drawings, shadows are rudely but not badly shown by peculiar linings. At Bruniquet, also, in the department of Tarn-et-Garonne, such engravings of the mammoth and reindeer have been found.

One of the most interesting collections of relics of this age was found in the Station de la Madeleine, in the department of Dordogne. Bones and flints from another locality seem to show the marks of an iron hammer.