Neanderthal Cave-Dwellers. — Southern France, a limestone region, is honeycombed with caves (see Cavz-DwELLEas), and seems to have been the most populous centre of the Neanderthals (q.v.) — an intermediate race that extended from England to Hungary, at least, and were the typical savages of Paleolithic times. They were men of a species (Homo neanderthalensis) superior to the Heidelberg type of Chellean times (possibly their ancestor), but retained apelike characteristics, and cer tainly were far inferior in physique, as in mind, to the Neolithic men, presently to be described. The skull of the Neanderthal man was char acterized by an extremely receding forehead, by the great ridges of bone above the eves, a massive jaw with little chin, and very strong teeth and chewing-muscles, indicating that these eo4 ancient p e were meat-eaters. They were men of sto , robust frames, averaging about five feet an four inches in height, but they had not yet acquired a fully erect attitude of body.
The relics of the earlier part of the Mous terian period show little advance over the pre ceding culture; but later the increased employ ment of the sharp, knife-like flint-flake, re touched on one side only, is observable, and a gradual increase in the making of different hunting-weapons, and of small awls, scrapers and so forth, of stone and bone, and of needles necessary to sewing the skin clothing re quired in the colder weather of that time as compared with the era of their remote fore fathers. Is it not possible that the improve ment noted may be the result of the greater wants to be filled, and energy required thereby, owing to the increased difficulty of maintaining existence and comfort in a cold world? No evidence that these cave-men had or knew of the bow and arrow has yet come to light.
As the glaciers of this Mousterian period of cold, which lasted many thousands of years, melted, returning warmth of climate introduced the post-glacial conditions that with minor changes have continued to the present. It was at this juncture that the Neanderthal race came to an end, and did so with a relative suddenness that is astonishing. The latest student of the matter, Prof. H. F. Osborn, regards it as a case of the complete extinction of a species. far as we know at present," he declares, °the Neanderthals were entirely eliminated; no trace of the survival of the pure Neanderthal type has been found in any of the Upper Paleolithic burial-sites.* With their disappear ance ends the Mousterian stage, and the Lower Paleolithic period.
The Upper Paleolithic.— In the strata over lying that in which the relics of the Mousterian or Cave-man culture are found, lie the evi dences of a new and different kind of industry, which introduces the Upper-Paleolithic division of the Old Stone Age.
This is known as the Aurignacian culture, and is attributed to the immigration into western Europe of a race of men, probably from the southeast, as Aurignacian relics are found on all the shores around the Mediter ranean Sea. The inroad of these foreign and better-armed people was followed by the destruction of the race of Cave-men, whose grottoes and rock-shelters were adopted as homes by their conquerors. This happened, it is believed, between 25,000 and 30,000 years W ago. Who were these strangers? hence, did they come? It is believed that they were Asiatics who had slowly worked their way westward chiefly, if not wholly, along the southern shore of the Mediterranean into and beyond Spain. They were true men— Homo not intermediate in structure and ability between human and simian, as were their predecessors in Europe. In short they are the ancestors of a large part of the men of to-day, and it is unfortunate that they are not known by a better name than °Cro-Mairtions*— the designation of the cave in Dordogne, France, where their first-known skeletons were obtained. They were tall, well-built men, with
heads long fore and aft (dolichocephalic), and with broad faces, pleasing features and well developed chins. Probably the complexion of the skin was dark. They were men of large brains, a race, in Osborn's opinion, °capable of ideas, of reasoning, of imagination, and more highly endowed with artistic sense and ability than any uncivilized race which has ever been discovered.° A large volume would be needed to describe thoroughly all of their industrial and social life as shown by the relics of the four successive stages of culture into which their long history has been divided by archaeol ogists. It must be summarized here in a few paragraphs.
The Cro-Magnons were essentially hunters, living on the flesh of wild beasts, including the mammoth, an extinct rhi noceros (elasmothere), aurochs, wild horse and other animals of the forests and plains. They dwelt not only in caves and rock-shelters but in great winter-camps, where they built clusters of houses made of timbers and covered with hides, many sketches of which they have left for our information. But they were nomads, and in summer wandered in hunting and fish ing bands, for there is no evidence that agri culture was practised. They had excellent weapons of chipped stone for both warfare and hunting, and probably used bows and ar rows. They made various hooks and spears for fishing, and tools of stone, bone and horn for the preparation of skins, for sewing and other household purposes; but they made no pottery. In some regions they advanced in culture more than elsewhere. They spread in Aurignacian times from the upper Danube in the East to Belgium and Britain in the West, hut southern France was the most populous. There it was that their life came to be most settled, and the extraordinary art that distinguished the Aurignacian time was most highly developed. The soil of the caves occupied by the people of this period, and the sites of their camping places, abound in small flint-flakes carefully pointed into delicate engraving tools — among them one shaped just like a modern burin. It was with these gravers that they cut from ivory and soapstone statuettes of animal and human figures, or incised on slabs of slate, tusks, flat bones, antlers, and especially on the walls of grottoes, pictures of the beasts about them, scenes of the chase, drawings of their houses, etc., sketched not only with startling fidelity to nature but with an artistic sense marvelous in the circumstances. They had a love of beauty, an instinct for true art, which led them to try to ornament everything they used; and this art was steadily cultivated and developed until it reached its astonishing culmination in Magdalenian times. The cutting out of figures in bas-relief from stone surfaces (usually a cavern wall), and the modeling of statuettes, are distinctively Aurignacian; and in this stage, also, painting had its birth, for many of the colored drawings that adorn the walls and ceilings of the caves date from this period — for examples, the red-outlined bison and aurochs in the grotto of Castillo, Spain, and the spirited drawings in red ochre of the woolly rhinoceros, and of a stag in the cave at Font de Gaume, France. In many cases the Aurig nacian artist carved the outlines and distin guishing features of his subject in deeply in cised lines, with minute attention to character istic details. Therefore zoologists find some of these portraits of animals valuable to them, particularly with reference to the history of horses in Europe. The picture whose outlines were thus engraved was then coated with a red dish or yellowish paint composed of ochre and manganese mixed on a palette of schist.