Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/531

Rh In considering this question, I do not take into account those portions of the cave in which there are variations from what may be regarded as the typical section, these being mainly due to accidental and local causes, such as the breaking up of beds of stalagmite of earlier date than those above the cave-earth, but restrict myself to the main features of the case.

There can be little doubt that, as has been pointed out by Mr. Pengelly, the accumulation of the cave-earth containing these remains took place slowly and gradually; large blocks of limestone and films of stalagmite encrusting stones and bones, or cementing them into a firm concrete, running at all levels and in all parts of the principal chamber. So that, without entering into any discussion as to the manner in which the red earth and pebbles of the deposit were introduced into the cavern, which would be here somewhat out of place, we may safely assume that the bones and teeth, whatever may have been their antiquity at the time of their introduction into the cave-earth, were deposited in the positions in which they are now found, at the same time as the implements with which they are associated. We can, however, readily conceive circumstances under which old deposits, containing relics of extinct animals, might be disturbed from their position in a cave, and re-deposited with objects of human workmanship belonging to a far more recent period. In fact, among the bones themselves there are some which, as has already been pointed out, have belonged to an earlier deposit than that in which they are now found. Let us, therefore, examine into the possibility of these instruments of flint and bone belonging to a different period from that of the animals with the remains of which they now occur. One thing, of course, is evident, that whether there has been a mixture in the cave-earth of objects belonging to various ages or no, such a mixture could only have taken place before the thick coating of stalagmite which now overlies them had even begun to accumulate. The amount of time represented by such a coating, it is, of course, impossible to calculate; but, even under the most favourable circumstances, it must have been the work of hundreds, or more probably thousands of years; and yet its deposit had been completed before the introduction of the overlying black mould, which has proved to contain objects to which an antiquity of at least two thousand years may safely be assigned.

But what do the presence and condition of these instruments