The Riviera of the Corniche Road

by Frederick Treves

They are known as the Palæolithic folk—the cavern people, the men and women of the rough Stone Age. Their finest implements and most cunning weapons were of unpolished flint. They had a knowledge of fire. These two possessions express the meagre progress they had made in the march of civilisation.

There are certain skeletons of these cliff-folk in the Museum at Monaco. It is a memorable moment when one first has sight of men who were alive some 50,000 years ago, and who, after interminable centuries, have just come again into the light of day and the company of their kind. It is at least—in the records of the human family—a curious meeting, a meeting rendered almost dramatic when one sees a dainty French lady in the mode of 1920 peering through a glass case into the face of an ancestor who walked the shores of France in an age so remote as to be almost mythical.

There is an impression with some that these people of long ago were brutish creatures, ape-like and uncouth, being little more, in fact, than gorillas with a leaven of human craft. The Red Cliff skeletons, however, are not the skeletons of brutes. They show, on the contrary, the characteristic features of the bones of the man and woman of modern times. Such differences as exist are slight. There are the same straight back, the broad shoulders, the well-balanced head, the finely proportioned limbs, the delicate feet and hands. This skeleton of a Red Cliff man might have been that of a modern athlete, but with a muscular development that the modern would envy; while this shapely woman, from the depths of a cave, might have graced in life the enclosure at Ascot. There are some peculiarities in the shinbone, but I doubt if they would be noticeable even through a silk stocking. The skull is different, the face is flat, the nose broad, the forehead low, the jaws prominent. From the Ascot standpoint it must be allowed that the cave folk had ugly faces, coarse and unintellectual no doubt, but not the aspect of the gorilla.

Among the skeletons from the colony at Mentone is one of especial interest. It is that of an old woman whose body was found in the deepest part of the cavern, and who, therefore, may be assumed to have belonged to the earliest or most ancient of the inhabitants. She is perfectly and, indeed, finely formed. Her age would be about seventy. It is to be noted incidentally that the bones show no evidences of gross rheumatic changes nor of other disabling trouble. That an old lady could live for seventy years in a damp cave, in a chilly climate, and escape such inconveniences is a sign of her time and of ours.

It is not known at what age Eve died, but if she reached the term of three score years and ten these perfect and undisturbed bones may be imagined to be those of the Mother of Men. Eve is generally depicted by the sculptor as an elegant lady with a noble Greek face, in which is realised the extreme of refinement. It would probably be more exact if our first mother were shown in the form of a stalwart woman with the countenance of the Australian aborigines or of a Hottentot.

A SIDE STREET IN MENTONE.

The lady of Mentone has around her forearm two bracelets. They are made of sea shells and are just such as an ingenious child might make while sitting on the beach in an idle summer. One might suppose that the wearer was proud of them, and it may be that vanity in woman and love of dress—or, at least, of jewellery—are born with her. If this be so, it is a pity that the wearer of the bracelets could not have known, in her lifetime, that her cherished ornaments would still be on her arm and would still be gazed upon by men 50,000 years after she had ceased to be.

It is a matter of interest and indeed of present envy to note how perfect are the teeth of these early folk, how strong they are, how solidly they are ground down. They must have gnawed the bones of the mammoth, of the cave bear, and of the woolly rhinoceros, for the remains of such animals are abundant in the dust heaps of these caverns. The standard of comfort in the commune of Red Cliff was low, for it has to be recognised that not only did whole families occupy one apartment, but in that apartment they cooked their food, deposited their refuse, and buried their dead.