Page:Prehistoric Britain.djvu/97

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CULTURE AND CIVILIZATION
89

Central Europe as far west as England, and some parts of the Spanish peninsula. The coup-de-poing, which was the chief weapon or implement used by him, has been found not only along his highways and by-ways in European countries, but in Algeria, Egypt, Sahara, Congo, the Cape, Palestine, Persia and India.

3. Moustérien.—This term is derived from the well-known cave of Le Moustier, situated on the right bank of the Vézère, and about ninety feet above it. It was examined by Lartet and Christy in 1863, and subsequently by De Vibraye, Messénat, and others. Besides the deposits in the interior of the cave, there was an outside plateau in which a human skeleton of the Neanderthal-Spy type has been recently found (Fig. 12), see p. 181. During its habitation by man the climate appears to have been cold and damp, and among the contemporary fauna were the mammoth, woolly-haired rhinoceros, cave-bear, and musk-ox. The two earlier elephants, hippopotamus and Rhinoceros merckii were not represented—thus indicating a cold climate.

The special features of the industrial remains found in Le Moustier were the scarcity of the coup-de-poing, and the splitting up of flints into smaller implements, such as scrapers and large flakes, mostly trimmed on one side only—the éclat Levallois of French writers. This multiplication of small implements was due to the fact that man, owing