Professor Denton has given a description of primeval time which, by a little change, would represent inter-glacial times: "The seasons are fairly established; and spring follows winter, and fall summer, as now; though the summer is longer and warmer than we are accustomed to see in those countries at the present time, and the winters colder. The country is covered with dense forests, through which ramble mighty elephants in herds, with immense curved tusks, coats of long, shaggy hair, and flowing manes.... Shuffling along comes the great cave-bear from his rocky den—as large as a horse: fierce, shaggy, conscious of his strength, he fears no adversary. Crouched by a bubbling spring lies the cave-tiger (Felis spelæa); and, as the wild cattle come down to drink, he leaps upon the back of one, and a terrible combat ensues. It is as large as an elephant, and its horns of enormous size; and even cave-tigers could not always master such cattle as they.
"Are these the highest forms of life that the country contains? What being is that sitting on yon fallen tree? His long arms are in front of his hairy body, and his hands between his knees; while his long legs are dangling down. His complexion is darker than an Indian's; his beard short, and like the hair of his body; the unkempt hair of his head is bushy and thick; his eyebrows are short and crisp; and with his sloping forehead and brutal countenance, he seems like the caricature of a man, rather than an actual human being.
"Beneath the shade of a spreading chestnut we may behold a group—one old man ... and women and children, lounging and lying upon the ground. How dirty! What forbidding countenances!—more like furies than women. One young man, with a stone axe, is separating the bark from a neighboring tree. Others, agile as monkeys, are climbing the trees, and passing from branch to branch, as they gather the wild fruit that abounds on every side. Some are catching fish in the shallows of the river, and yell with triumph as they hold their captives by the gills, dragging them to the shore."[63]
They have improved their language, and instead of the rude signs and undistinguishable sounds of the glacial, may now be heard short, but occasional sentences, which were the forerunners of the polished tongues of modern Europe.
CHAPTER VIII.
REINDEER EPOCH.
The glaciers, to a limited extent, have again advanced. The gigantic animals of the past age have either disappeared or are fast becoming extinct. The great cave-bear, cave-lion, cave-hyena, mammoth, and woolly-haired rhinoceros have almost become extinct. They have given way to a less fierce and less gigantic fauna. The advance of the glaciers is announced by the numerous herds of reindeer which are overrunning the forests of Western Europe, and extending as far south as the Pyrenees. In the forests there now existed the horse, bison, wild bull (Bos primigenius), musk-ox, elk, deer, chamois, ibex, beaver, hamster-rat, lemming, and many others. These animals were capable of withstanding and flourishing in a rigorous climate. When the glaciers were again broken up and the climate became warmer, the reindeer, musk-ox, elk, chamois, wild-goat, hamster-rat, and lemming retired to the high northern latitudes in close proximity to the snow, or else to the lofty summits of great mountain-chains.
The evidences of the antiquity of the reindeer epoch, and that it immediately followed the inter-glacial, are numerous. The vast number of the reindeer bones and horns attest to a distinct epoch, and by the remains of arctic animals, as well as the traces of glaciers, the climate must have been unlike that of the present time. The remains of the mammoth, cave-bear, and cave-lion, would not only connect this period with the inter-glacial, but also prove that a few stragglers continued to exist, at least for a short period, after the reindeer epoch had begun. That this epoch was earlier than the Swiss lake-villages, or Danish shell mounds, may be shown by the weapons or implements which point to a more primitive people, the absence of the remains of the dog, and, also, by the absence of the remains of the reindeer in the shell-mounds.