This jaw-bone belonged to an old man, and is described as displaying "a tendency toward the animal structure in the shortness and breadth of the ascending ramus (the perpendicular portion of the lower jaw), the equal height of the two apophyses (a process or regular prominence forming a continuous part of the body of the bone), the indication of prognathism (projecting jaw) furnished by the very obtuse angle at which the ramus joins the body of the bone.[14]
Near the same locality other human bones were discovered Which presented the same characteristics.
Boucher de Perthes having pointed out that flint implements could be found in the valley of the Seine, in beds similar to those of Abbeville, the antiquaries were soon rewarded and Boucher de Perthes' prediction was fulfilled. M. Gosse, of Geneva, found the Abbeville type of implements in the lowest diluvial deposits associated with the remains of animals of that period.
The discovery made by Casiano de Prado, near Madrid, is very similar to those of Abbeville. "First, vegetable soil; then about twenty-five feet of sand and pebbles, under which was a layer of sandy loam, in which, during the year 1850, a complete skeleton of the mammoth was discovered. Underneath this stratum was about ten feet of coarse gravel, in which some flint axes, very closely resembling those of Amiens, have been discovered."[15]
The remains of man are also preserved in caverns associated with the fossil bones of the mammoth, the woolly-haired rhinoceros, cave-bear, and other extinct quadrupeds. Among these should be noticed Kent's Hole, which has furnished a mine of wealth. Of his discoveries Godwin-Austen says: "Human remains and works of art, such as arrow-heads and knives of flint, occur in all parts of the cave, and throughout the entire thickness of the clay; and no distinction founded on condition, distribution, or relative position can be observed, whereby the human can be separated from the other reliquiæ," which included bones of the mammoth (E. primigenius), rhinoceros (R. tichorrhinus), cave-bear (Ursus spelæus), cave-hyena (H. spelæus), and other mammalia. These researches were conducted in parts of the cave which had never been disturbed, and the works of man, in every instance, were procured from undisturbed loam or clay, beneath a thick covering of stalagmite; and all these must have been introduced before the stalagmite flooring had been formed.[16] These specimens of man's handicraft were found far below the stalagmite floor.[17] Closely allied to Kent's Hole is Brixham Cave. The following gives the general succession of deposits forming the contents of the cavern:
1. A layer of stalagmite varying from one to fifteen inches in thickness.
2. Next below, ochreous cave-earth, from one foot to fifteen feet in thickness.
3. Rounded gravel, in some places more than twenty feet in depth.
In the second layer there were found the remains of the mammoth, rhinoceros, cave-bear, cave-hyena, cave-lion, reindeer, and seven other species. Indiscriminately mixed with these bones were found many flint knives, but chiefly from the lowest part of the ochreous cave-earth, varying in depth from ten inches to thirteen feet. The antiquity of these cannot be doubted, from the simple fact, even if there was no other, that in close proximity to a very perfect flint tool was discovered the entire left hind leg of a cave-bear, and every bone in its natural position. From the bone earth there were taken fifteen knives, recognized, by the experienced antiquaries, as having been artificially formed. In the lowest gravel, underlying all, there were found imperfect specimens of flint knives. The fine layer of mud was deposited by the slow but regular action of water. Since these layers were formed the stream has cut its channel seventy-eight feet below its former level.[18]
On both banks of the Meuse, at Maestricht (Hollerd) are terraces of gravel covered with loess. Below the city, on the left bank, one of these terraces projects into the alluvial plain of the Meuse. During the construction of the canal the terrace was opened to a depth of sixty feet. The upper twenty feet consisted of loess and the lower forty feet of stratified gravel. Great numbers of molars, tusks, and bones of elephants, together with those of other mammalia, and a human lower jaw with teeth, were found in or near this gravel. The human jaw was at a depth of nineteen feet from the surface, in a stratum of sandy loam, beneath a stratum of pebbly and sandy beds, and immediately above the gravel. The stratum from which the jaw was taken was intact and had never been disturbed. But the jaw was somewhat isolated, and the nearest fossil object was the tusk of an elephant six yards distant, though on a horizontal plane. This fossil is probably older than that discovered at Lahr. It was probably covered just before the gush of the water when it first began to flow from the gorges and had washed the ground at some distance from the ice.[19]