Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/259

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
CHAP. VII.]
CAVE-MEN AND RIVER-DRIFT MEN.
231

than the massive flints of the river-drift deposits. Camping-places of the Cave-men have been met with in France and in Germany, in which the implements are associated together in the same manner as in the caves. From one of these, at Schussenried in Würtemberg, Professor Fraas has described implements of bone and antler in an old refuse-heap resting upon a glacial deposit, formed by an extension of the Alpine glaciers into the valley of the Rhine, and proving that the Cave-men hunted the reindeer in Würtemberg after the retreat of the ice from that district. A second example is offered by that of Solutré, mentioned above, where implements of bone and antler, and elegantly chipped flint implements, some very small, have been met with by MM. Ferry, Arcelin, and others. Some caves and rock-shelters also were inhabited by the River-drift men, who have left behind their implements without any trace of the higher types of the Cave-men, although the refuse-heaps of both have been subjected in the main to the same set of destructive agencies. In them the two series present the same contrast in contents as that offered by the implements from the River-drift when compared with those of the caves. The two series must therefore be taken to represent two distinct states of culture, of which the newest, or that of the Cave-men, is by far the higher.

Mr. Evans[1] is inclined to hold that they belong to the same age and the same race, his argument being principally based upon the fact that the associated animals are the same in the river-deposits and the caves. It must, however, be remarked that the Pleistocene age was of vast duration, and that the latest division of it, during which the animals exhibit no variation, was long

  1. Ancient Stone Implements, p. 574.