Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/252

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
224
EARLY MAN IN BRITAIN.
[CHAP. VII.

has also been discovered. In both of these the body forms the handle of the dagger. The human figure also is represented in two small ivory statuettes[1] found in the caves of Southern France; but, as might be expected, they are so roughly done, that they tell us little of the physique of the Cave-man. The ivory used in the sculptures and engravings was undoubtedly derived from the tusks of the mammoth, and the sharpness of the outlines implies that it was used while fresh. The graving tools consisted of the sharp edges and points of flint flakes.

When we take into account the rude materials which the Cave-men possessed for their sculptures and engravings, the accuracy with which they represented the figures which came more prominently before them in their daily life is most extraordinary, and at the present day it only finds a parallel among uncivilised peoples in the artistic representations of the Eskimos.

Skeletons of Cave-men.

Human bones of the Cave-men are as rare in the caverns and rock-shelters as in the river-deposits, and are for the most part represented merely by fragments. We owe to M. Dupont[2] the discovery of a lower jaw and an ulna at a depth of 4⋅50 mètres below the surface, in the cave of Naulette, in an undisturbed layer, covered by successive deposits of sand, stalagmite, and clay. The jaw is massive and prognathous. A second case of the occurrence of the bones of Cave-men is offered by a lower jaw obtained by M. de Vibraye in the Grotte des Fées,[3] at Arcy-sur-Cure (Yonne). It rested in the

  1. Laugerie Basse, Matériaux, 1868, p. 209.
  2. Op. cit.
  3. Bull. Soc. Geol. de France, 2d sér xviL p. 462. Hamy, Paléontologie Humaine, 1870, p. 235.