6

Noulet, like so many other Pyrenean caves, was used as sepulchres long after the formidable carnivora of the quaternary epoch who had frequented them had been destroyed, and when the tribes who had consecrated the ground to this pious use had reached a relatively advanced stage of civilisation, since they were acquainted with the art of the potter, knew the use of bronze, and had domesticated those animals which still render us such valuable service.' 1

Evidently, and for similar reasons, there is no longer any belief in what has been called the poetry of Aurignac, or in the funeral feast so readily admitted by certain. archæologists who have made a study of prehistoric times. Moreover, when we have assigned a more recent date to these tombs, the same correction brings nearer to our own day the greater part of the human remains which they contain, and considerably modifies our views upon their palæontology, craniology, and ethnology. The study of the graves erroneously supposed to be contemporary with the subjacent quaternary stratum must therefore, if it is still possible, be begun again. In any case the warning is now given, and a careful examination of the articles contained in the caves is all that is needed for the avoiding of similar mistakes for the future."

The cave of Duruthy furnishes a further proof of the extreme care necessary to determine the age of any given tomb. Judging only from the human bones found beneath the hearths, it appears to belong to the epoch of the cave bear; whereas it should really be attributed to

3

1 Dr. Noulet, Etude sur la caverne de l'Herm. Mém. de l'Acad. des Sciences, inscript. et lettres de Toulouse, vol. vi. p. 515, 1874.

2 The list of these mistakes, if we are to rely upon the statement of M. Cartailhac, is already considerable. It includes the human bones of Bize (Tournal), of Pondus and Souvignargues (of Christol); of Cannstadt even (Jäger), and of Mosbach (Meyer), which are much more recent than was supposed. It is the same with those of the cave to which M. Ed. Dupont has given the name of Trou du Frontal (Belgium), and whose contents he wrongly likened to those of the cave of Aurignac. Bruniquel, Cro-Magnon, and even Solutré, are open to dispute. These are grave assertions, and should be considered seriously; but in my opinion, at least, the proofs are not sufficiently convincing.

At Duruthy a human skull was found, with a number of flint

the intermediate epoch which separates the reindeer age from that of the dolmens, and in which the fine carving of the flints announces the near approach of the age polished stone.

of

We have already spoken of the funeral feast of which M.Ed. Dufort believed he had discovered the traces in the Trou du Frontal: a mistake all the more natural that there are in the burial caves a number of hearths, as well as the broken and charred bones of animals in still greater abundance. Feasts and every meal were then held there, of which the flesh of wild animals now extinct was the chief article of diet. But these meals took place, these fires were lighted, at a far earlier date than that of the funerals, perhaps even by men of another race than those whose remains are found above the quaternary beds.

Solutré, however, forms an exception to the general rule, and it appears difficult to reconcile the circumstances. connected with this cave with the law enunciated by M. Cartailhac, who goes so far as to say that every complete human skeleton found in the caves may be assumed, à priori, to be more recent than the fluvial bed in which it lies. For in fact it is proved that at Solutré many human skeletons, entire or nearly so, are placed horizontally upon the hearths. There is nothing to show that the overlying stratum has been disturbed since the time at which they were interred; moreover this bed contains no object dating from the neolithic age, it contains on the contrary a number of bones of the reindeer, horse, and mammoth, and a number of articles of a very primitive industry. It is true that Solutré is not a cave, but merely an open-air station.

For the rest, although we ought to be extremely cautious in determining the age of the remains contained in the burial crypts, it does not follow that human remains

implements and a necklace made of teeth of the lion and the bear. But it lay in a bed which had evidently been disturbed, in a tomb overlying a fossiliferous stratum. We cannot, therefore, be certain that this skull was the contemporary of the animals of whose teeth the necklace was formed.

of the same date as the bones of extinct animals found along with them never occur in the burial caves, hollow rocks, and elsewhere. We have already cited a considerable number of examples; but in these various cases, with a few exceptions (Mentone, Laugerie Basse), the human bones were generally isolated, few in number, and scattered here and there, like those of other mammalia of extinct species and their contemporaries.

Lastly, the human skeleton found entire by MM. Massenat and Cartailhac under the heap of rocks close to the shelter of Laugerie Basse, and that discovered at Mentone by M. Rivière, and which is now in the Paris Museum, prove the synchronism of man and the reindeer towards the middle of the paleolithic age.1

There is then nothing to show that man did not coexist with the Ursus spelaus in the cave of l'Herm, if it be true, as MM. Rames, Garrigou, and Filhol maintain, that the human bones found by them in this cave were collected not upon the surface of the soil, but some in a deep layer of undisturbed argillaceous sediment, the others below a thick crust of intact and crystalline stalagmite, and were in precisely the same condition as those of the extinct species with which they were found.

The tomb discovered by M. Noulet (the vestibule of l'Herm) is of far more recent date, and the cave of Herm, like so many others, contains remains belonging to two different epochs. As for the caves of the neolithic age, there is seldom any difficulty in assigning a date to the tombs which occur in them (e.g., Saint-Jean-d'Alcas, Durfort).

IV. THE DOLMENS.

The traveller in the plains of Brittany, in the centre of France, and in the valleys of the Pyrenees, encounters,

1 M. Rivière at first held that the human skeleton discovered by him in one of the caves at Mentone was contemporary with the cave bear whose bones were found in company with it. But the tools and ornaments which surrounded the skeleton prove beyond dispute that it belongs to a more recent age, namely, that of the reindeer, although this animal never inhabited that region. The cave of Mentone is then one of the many instances in which the subsequent disturbance of the ground may lead to considerable mistakes.

almost at every step, strange monuments, generally constructed of one or more unhewn stones of colossal size placed horizontally upon two, three, or four upright blocks, and sometimes on heaps of unmortared stones, the whole covered with earth, or left exposed. These are the dolmens, called also covered alleys, druidic altars, or sometimes giant tombs. According to the Baron de Bonstetten, the word dolmen is formed from the two Breton words daul or dol, table, and men, stone, and signifies consequently stone-table (see fig. 42).

Isolated upright stones may also be observed; these are known as menhirs (fig. 43). The menhirs are enormous blocks of stone, triangular, pyramidal, or conical, a kind of unhewn or roughly squared obelisk, sometimes occurring singly, sometimes in groups or rows. In the latter case they are often in considerable numbers. The famous stones of Carnac (Morbihan), extending nearly a

1 Six and even seven occur in the dolmens of Poitou.

2 The words dolmen, cromlech, and menhir are purely conventional words coined by archæologis's. They are borrowed from the low-Breton patois or from the Gaelic, and signify stone-table, stone-circle, and longstone. But in spite of their Keltic origin, these terms are no proof that these megalithic monuments, sometimes also styled Druidic, are the work of the Kelts or Druids.

mile in length, number eleven thousand, ranged in eleven rows. The size of some of these blocks is truly colossal. The conical menhir of Lock-Maria-ker in Morbihan, for example, measures twenty yards in length, and averages two yards across. At Dol, near Saint Malo, the menhir of Champ-Dolent rises thirty feet above the surface of the

soil, and extends below it to a depth of fifteen. The dolmens are not peculiar to Brittany; they are found in other French provinces, and they also occur in the north of Europe, in the whole of the Mediterranean basin, and even in India.

These megalithic monuments may be divided into two