Page:Prehistoric Britain.djvu/96

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PREHISTORIC BRITAIN

cave-bear and cave-hyæna, together with flint implements almost exclusively of the coup-de-poing type. These animals were survivals from the Pliocene Age, and the presence of their bones in any locality indicates a warm climate. The middle portion of the deposits was cemented by calcareous infiltrations, and according to G. de Mortillet both it and the upper sandy gravels were later formations, and contained only bones of the mammoth, together with those of the northern fauna and stone implements of Moustérien types.

2. Acheuléen.—The flint implements found at Saint Acheul, at Amiens, in the valley of the Somme, from which the Acheuléen epoch derives its name, are not very different from those of Chelles. The former have a greater variety of forms, and the coup-de-poing becomes sensibly thinner, smaller, and more delicately chipped at the edges. The more pointed of the Chelléen forms are known to the workmen as "ficrons," while the almond-shaped specimens, called "limandes," are characteristic of Saint Acheul. Moreover, the two earlier elephants and the Rhinoceros merckii have been found in the alluvial beds at Abbeville. Human bones, with perhaps the exception of the Piltdown skull and mandible, have not been found in these river gravels sufficiently well preserved to inspire confidence in drawing precise racial conclusions from them; but the flint implements are valid proof that man lived at that time in