Fig. 34.—Head of the Rhinoceros Tichorhinus found in the Cave of Aurignac.
Fig. 35.—Head of a great Stag (Megaceros hibernicus) found in the Cave of Aurignac.
Of all these species, the fox has left behind him the largest number of remains. This carnivorous animal was represented by about eighteen to twenty individual specimens. Neither the mammoth, great cave-lion, nor wild boar appear to have been conveyed into the cave in an entire state; for two or three molar or incisive teeth are the only remains of their carcases which have been found.
But still it is a certain fact that the men who fed on the Rhinoceros tichorinus buried their dead in this cavern. In fact, M. Lartet asserts that the bones of the rhinoceros had been split by man in order to extract the marrow. They had also been gnawed by hyænas, which would not have been the case if these bones had not been thrown away, and left on the ground in a fresh state.
The burial-place of Aurignac dates back to the earliest antiquity, that is to say, it was anterior to the European diluvial period. Thus, according to M. Lartet, the great cave-bear was the first of the extinct species to disappear; then the mammoth and Rhinoceros tichorhinus were lost sight of; still later, the reindeer first, and then the bison, migrated to the northern and eastern regions of Europe. Now, the diluvium, that is to say, the beds formed by drifted pebbles and originating in the great derangement caused by the inundation of the quaternary epoch, does not contain any traces of the bones of the cave-bear. It, therefore, belongs to an epoch of the stone age more recent than the cave of Aurignac. [6] All this goes to prove that this sepulchral cave, which has furnished the science of the antiquity of man with so much valuable information, belonged to the great bear and mammoth epoch, which preceded the diluvial cataclysm.