Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/27

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PRIMIGENIAL SKELETONS.
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bone instruments that were found beside it, and we come to the skeletons discovered in cave No. 5 by M. Bonfils, curator of the Mentone Museum, in February of 1884. Again three were found together. Owing to the stupidity and jealousy of the actual owner of the land, an Italian peasant of the name of Abbo, they were much broken; but neither of these skulls, which M. Bonfils has shown to us, seems to be quite of the same formation as those of 1892, though the peculiar, somewhat quadrangular shape of

Photograph of the Palæolithic Skeleton discovered in the Fifth Cave in the Rochers Rouges, near Mentone, on January 12, 1894. Reproduced by the kind permission of M. Bertrand, Mentone.

the orbital cavities, turning up at the outer corners, is very similar. Prof. Boyd Dawkins believed these 1884 skeletons to be of "doubtful antiquity." They, however, appear more ancient than those found in 1872; and the male skeleton was of gigantic size, being six feet nine and a half inches in height, from top of head to heel, according to M. Bonfils. The latter also discovered with


    marks "devait être porte suspendu au cou comme insigne. Il ne porte aucun dessin, ni gravure, ni entaille" ("was probably worn suspended from the neck as an insignium. It bears no drawing, or engraving, or carving"). We may here add that if what he here describes is in any way like what we have referred to under the skeleton of 1892, it is probably a roughly formed totem for veneration.