Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/532

510 denote? The flint flakes occur in great numbers, and have mostly been used; the blocks from which they were struck are present; there are traces of fire on some of the bones; there are hammer-stones, whetstones, weapons of the chase, and the needle of the housewife; all prove that during the accumulation of the cave-earth, the cavern was, at all events from time to time, the habitation of man. How far this human occupancy may have alternated with that of predaceous animals may be a matter of question; but of man's sojourn in Kent's Cavern for a lengthened period in all, before the deposition of the upper stalagmite, there can be no doubt. But in all cases of human occupancy of caves we find, and it could not well be otherwise, the refuse of man's food, in the shape of the bones of the animals whose flesh he consumed, or the shells of the edible molluscs with which his meals were varied. We have seen that in the black mould above the stalagmite, the implements of bronze and stone are associated with a fauna essentially the same as that of the present day. But the bulk of the mammals which are found above the stalagmite do not occur below it; and assuming, as we must do, that the earlier occupants of the cave subsisted on animal food, and were unable to eat the whole of the bones as well as the flesh, some portion of the bones below the stalagmite must be the refuse from their meals. Without insisting on the perfect contemporaneity of all the animal remains found together in the cave-earth, we may therefore safely affirm that we have here relics of man associated with a fauna from which the ordinary forms of ox, sheep, goat, pig, and dog are entirely absent, and of which the majority of forms are now either totally or locally extinct.

That the fauna represented in the cave-earth is, however, to be regarded as all belonging to one and the same period—unless possibly the Machairodus is to be excepted—is shown, as will subsequently be seen, by the occurrence of the remains of, at all events, all the larger mammals, associated together in the old River-drifts.

Comparing this result with that obtained from an examination of the French caves, the rock-shelters in which almost the whole accumulation is a kind of refuse heap, we find it fully confirmed, so far as the animals best adapted for human food are concerned. The rarity of the remains of the other animals in these rock- shelters is probably to be accounted for by the fact that the sole occupants were human; and that either their tenancy was