Page:Smithsonian Report (1909).djvu/719

Rh the Neandertal or Mousterian race. On the other hand, he believes it later developed into the Cro-Magnon and Chancelade types.

The caverns of Grimaldi (Baoussé-Roussé), between Mentone and Ventimiglia and on the Italian side of the international boundary, form one of the most compact groups of paleolithic caverns in all Europe.

Counting two small rock-shelters, the group includes nine stations, the most important being the Grotte des Enfants, La Barma Grande, Grotte du Cavillon and the Grotte du Prince. General attention was first called to this region many years ago by Rivière's discovery of a human skeleton in the Grotte du Cavillon—the so-called homme de Menton, now in the Natural History Museum, Paris. Later five skeletons in all were found at La Barma Grande, and two, of children, in the Grotte des Enfants, whence its name.

Interest in archeology and ownership of one of the caverns (Grotte du Prince), led the Prince of Monaco to provide for a systematic exploration of the Grimaldi cavern deposits hitherto undisturbed, beginning with the virgin Grotte du Prince. The work was placed in the hands of the Canon L. de Villeneuve, Prof. M. Boule, and Dr. R. Verneau. The Grotte du Prince proved to be rich in faunal remains. Not a single human bone was found, however, although as many as twenty-eight hearths were encountered. The age, therefore, of the skeletons previously found in the neighboring caverns still remained in doubt. Work was next begun (1900) in the Grotte des Enfants that had been only partially explored by Rivière. Here, as at the Grotte du Prince, the entire series of deposits was found to be Quaternary; the occupation of the cavern, however, is supposed to have begun and to have ended a little later than at the Prince's cavern.

The two layers at the bottom were characterized by a so-called warm or tropical fauna—Elephas antiquus and Rhinoceros merckii. All the succeeding layers contain the fauna of the reindeer. The explorers were rewarded by finding human remains at three distinct levels, all three being in the reindeer deposits. Beginning at the bottom, a common sepulture with an adult female and youthful male skeleton was encountered at a depth of 8.5 meters and resting directly on the deposits with the fauna of Elephas antiquus. On account of their accentuated negroid characters, these differ from all other Quaternary skeletons. To this type, which Verneau has called the Race de Grimaldi, attention has been called afresh by the Venus of Willendorf, a stone figurine recently discovered near Krems, Austria.

At a level of less than a meter above the common sepulture with negroid remains was found a male skeleton of the Cro-Magnon type. The fauna of the two horizons is precisely the same, and con-