Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 44.djvu/647

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FOSSIL MAN.
631

been used for tools only. They made harpoons, barbed arrowheads, and needles not much longer than our. own, with pierced eyes. Burned wood and ashes are evidence of their knowledge of fire and perhaps cooking, though no vessels for this purpose have been found. From the needles it is a fair inference that they made clothes out of the skins of animals. They also carved with flints on the bones of animals, some of these of fair artistic merit;

Fig. 9.—Delineations on Pieces of Antler (La Madelaine). 1. Drawing of a fish on reindeer horn. 2. Representation of a squatting stag on stag horn. 3. Running reindeer on reindeer horn. 4. Piece of reindeer horn, showing on one side two heads of the aurochs, and on the other a human figure, an eel (?), two horse heads, and three rows of marks. The portions which would not be visible, owing to the roundness of the piece of horn, have been drawn beyond its contour.

most of the representations are of animals, few attempts being made at the human form, and these not good. They visited the seashore, as marine shells are found, and from the character of the burial places the inference is fair that they had some idea of a future existence.

The skeleton found in the cave of Mentone in the Mediterranean (just east of Nice) was probably of this race.

Toward the latter part of the time of the predominance of the reindeer there is a decrease in the bone implements found, and a greater finish is noted in the flint implements; no doubt, with the