PALAEOLITHIC PERIOD The earliest human remains as yet discovered—at Trinil (pithe canthropus), Heidelberg and Piltdown—were river-borne frag ments; whether originally buried is unknown, but the earlier part of the last ice age supplies in several instances evidence of the disposal of its dead by the Neanderthal race in Europe. Thus the bodies of the La Ferrassie man and child were protected by stones ; a pillow of flint-chippings was gathered together for the Le Moustier youth, and graves were dug for the La Chapelle man and La Ferrassie infant. Belief that the dead lived on and had the same needs as the living is shown in the stone implements placed with the Le Moustier, Spy I, and La Chapelle burials, and in the ochre and food supplied for La Chapelle ; and in each case the home of the dead is, as in life, the rock-shelter or cave.
Finds from the Upper Palaeolithic period are more numerous, and here again almost all burials are in caves or by rock-shelters, including probably the remarkable oval grave fenced round with mammoth shoulder-blades at Predmost (Moravia) : this enclosed 20 burials in squatting position, and was dug in loess close to a limestone outcrop which once probably formed a rock-shelter. The chief exception is the richly furnished single burial in level ground at Brunn. The same kind of provision continues to be made for the dead during this epoch, hut its developed culture provides finer implements and a wealth of personal ornament : necklaces, armlets, anklets, aprons, caps, of threaded shells and animals' teeth; carved bone amulets, ivory figurines. Instead of the small lumps of red ochre at La Chapelle, many of these later graves are liberally bestrewn with the substance. The cave-hearth is now frequently chosen as burial-site (Solutre, Grimaldi), and here occasional charred bones are more probably due to incom pletely extinguished fires than to deliberate cremation.
Though no invariable position characterizes palaeolithic burials, an attitude of sleep—knees bent, arm under head—is the most frequent in Europe ; while in Africa contracted posture obtained in the palaeolithic cave-burials discovered in 1927 near Lake Nakuru (Kenya), and with the skeleton of the same type and period from Oldoway (1913) further north. In Lower Palaeolithic burials at La Ferrassie and an Upper Palaeolithic at Grimaldi, however, were skeletons whose sharply-bent knees and arms were pressed close against the chest. So lie the dead of many primitive peoples : bound tightly lest they walk, or use their hands for mis chief on the living.
Already in Upper Palaeolithic Spain and France there are some indications of a cult of the skull in calvaria prepared as "bowls," and in occasional burial of the head alone. But with its closing phase (Azilian) comes the remarkable cave-burial at Ofnet (Ba varia) where the severed heads of the dead were deposited one by one into two scooped-out "nests," six into one, 27 into the other. They wore rich ornaments of shells and stags' teeth, were cere monially besprinkled with red ochre; and all faced west. Charcoal and charred remains near by suggested that the bodies were mated. From the same period date the human bones in Mas d'Azil (France), scraped clean of flesh and painted red before interment.