Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 32.djvu/339

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The distribution of implements in the cave represents, as may be seen from the preceding Table, three distinct stages. During the time of the deposit of the lower stratum Man is not represented among the fauna of the district. While the cave-earth was being accumulated, his presence is marked principally by the quartzite implements formed out of an intractable material, and far ruder than those which are generally formed out of the more easily fashioned flint.

Of ninety-four worked quartzite pebbles, only three were found in the breccia, while eight only of the 267 worked flints were met with in the cave-earth (including fig. 8). The hunter, therefore, of the cave-earth period used quartzite for most of his implements, while that of the age of the breccia used flint, the overlapping of the two materials in this cave being comparatively slight.

The workmanship of the later of these two periods of human occupation is of a higher order than the former. If, for example, we compare figs. 6, 9, 10, 11 with figs. 2, 3, 4, 5, it is impossible to resist the conclusion that the hunter of the breccia-age was better equipped than his predecessor of the era of the cave-earth.

If these groups of implements be compared with those found in other palæolithic deposits, it will be seen that the older quartzite division corresponds in its general form with that series which is assigned by M. de Mortillet ('Matériaux,' Mars 1869, "Essai d'une Classification") to "the age of Moustier and St. Acheul," and which is represented in this country by the rude implements of the lower breccia in Kent's Hole. The newer or flint division, on the other hand, contains among its forms more highly finished implements, such as figs. 6 and 7, which correspond with those which are considered by M. de Mortillet to belong to "the age of Solutré," and which are found in this country in the cave-earth of Kent's Hole and Wookey Hole. In this cave, therefore, we have a direct relation, in point of time, established between the rude types of implements below and the more finished ones above, which is a fact of no small importance in the classification of Palæolithic implements. In all future cave-explorations it will be necessary to keep a keen look-out for broken pebbles and roughly-edged stones, with scarcely any marks of design, which may have served the ends of savages of a far lower culture than those whose history has been revealed to us in the caves of Périgord and of Belgium.

This discovery of implements in Derbyshire extends considerably the known range of the Palæolithic hunter to the north and to the west. Hitherto the Vale of Clwyd has been the district furthest to the north in this country in which his implements have been discovered. The fragment of human fibula in the Victoria cave has