and, in general, badly executed. This may be owing perhaps to the want of appropriate tools, which have not been found at either place, whilst the Danish aborigines were provided with them in abundance. At Aurignac, therefore, and also at Massat, the long bones are rarely split longitudinally; sometimes the ends have been broken off, but more often the bones appear in some way to have been broken and reduced to fragments by blows from a stone; and in these two situations we have found, in the neighbourhood of the remains of the banquet, the blocks and pebbles, which may have served for this operation.
It may be asked, how is it, that with arms in appearance so inefficient as those we have described, the aborigines of ancient Aquitania ventured to attack animals of the size of the Great Cave Bear, Rhinoceros, &c.?[1]
It may be presumed, that, like the ancient Germani spoken of by Cæsar, the primitive inhabitants of the Pyrenees were acquainted with the art of constructing snares for these great animals, and of catching them in pits, concealed under the leaves and branches of trees. And besides this, their accurate knowledge of the most vulnerable points in the bodies of the animals, and the precision of their aim, either with the arrow or dart, might to a certain extent compensate for the imperfection of their rude weapons.[2]
Such is the general statement of the observations it was possible to make during the complete and careful exploration of the Aurignac station. The circumstances to which they relate are complex; and their succession also indicates a considerable lapse of time. The first traces of living creatures met with in the loose and, speaking geologically, comparatively recent deposits, are those of man, proving that he had made a fireplace on the platform outside the little cave, whilst the thickness of the layer of ashes upon this site shows that it was inhabited for a long time, or, at any rate, that it was frequently visited.
The complete absence of any trace of fire in the interior of the grotto, and the state of comparative preservation of the bones found
- ↑ In spite of all the attention which I have devoted to the examination of the bones found at Aurignac, and to the other circumstantial evidences afforded at that place, I have failed to detect the faintest indication of the existence of the Dog, that habitual companion of man in the chase, in all climates and in every state of barbarism. Under the piles belonging to the stone age in Switzerland, the remains of a dimmutive race of Dogs have been met with. In studying the fauna of the Danish kitchen-middens. Prof. Steenstrup has satisfied himself, from the way in which certain bones have been gnawed, that the Dog must have been the latest companion of the aborigines, and he has even found reason to believe it may sometimes have been eaten by them. At Massat (Ariége), a station far more recent than that of Aurignac, I have myself fancied that I could perceive indications of the presence of the Dog, from the way in which some of the herbivorous bones had been gnawed.
- ↑ The Shangallas, according to Bruce, kill the Rhinoceros with the worst arrows it is possible for a people making use of arms at all to have; and they flay it afterwards with knives no better than their arrows.
