He adds that this apparent antithesis, seen also in the limbs as well as in the skull, accords with the evidence furnished by the associated weapons and implements of a rude hunter-life, and at the same time of no mean degree of taste and skill in carving and other arts (see Fig. 9). He might have added that this is precisely the antithesis seen in the American tribes, among whom art and taste of various kinds, and much that is high and spiritual even in thought, coexisted with barbarous modes of life and intense ferocity and cruelty. The god and the devil were combined in these races, but there was nothing of the mere brute.
Rivière remarks, with expressions of surprise, the same contradictory points in the Mentone skeleton. Its grand development of brain-case and high facial angle—even higher, apparently, than in most of these ancient skulls—combined with other characters which indicate a low type and barbarous modes of life.
Another point which strikes us in reading the descriptions, and which deserves the attention of those who have access to the skeletons, is the indication which they seem to present of an extreme longevity. The massive proportions of the body, the great development of the muscular processes, the extreme wearing of the teeth among a people who predominantly lived on flesh and not on grain, the obliteration of the sutures of the skull, along with indications of slow ossification of the ends of the long bones, point in this direction, and seem to indicate a slow maturity and great length of life in this most primitive race.
The picture would be incomplete did we not add that in France and Belgium, in the immediately succeeding or reindeer age, these gigantic and magnificent men seem to have been superseded by a feebler race of smaller stature and with shorter heads; so that we have, even in these oldest days, the same contrasts so plainly perceptible in the races of the North of Europe and the North of America in historical times (Figure 10).
Fig. 10.
Section of the cave of Frontal, in Belgium. (After Dupont.) a, limestone; b, deposit of mud of the mammoth age, on which rests a bed of gravel, c, and above this there was, in modern times, a mass of fallen débris, d, up to the dotted line. On removing this, a hearth was found at e, on which were numerous bones of modern animals, the remains of funeral feasts. The cave was closed with a flat stone, and within were skeletons, stone implements, ornaments, and pottery of the "neolithic" age. Under these was undisturbed earth of the palæolithic, or mammoth age. The facts show the succession, in Belgium, of palæocosmic or antediluvian men and of neocosmic men allied to the Basques or to the Laps, and all this previous to the advent of the modern races.
It is further significant that there are some indications to show that the larger and nobler race was that which inhabited Europe at the time of its greatest elevation above the sea and greatest horizontal extent, and when its fauna included many large quadrupeds now extinct. This race of giants was thus in the possession of a greater continental area than that now existing, and had to contend with gigantic brute rivals for the possession of the world. It is also not improbable that this early race became extinct in Europe in consequence of the physical changes which occurred in connection with the subsidence which reduced the land to its present limits, and that the dwarfish race which succeeded came in as the appropriate accompaniment of a diminished land-surface and a less genial climate in the early modern period. Both of these races are properly palæolithic, and are supposed to antedate the period of polished stone; but this may, to a great extent, be a prejudice of collectors, who have arrived at a foregone conclusion as to the distinctness of these periods (Figure 11). Judging from the great cranial capacity of the older race and the small number of their skeletons found, it would be fair to suppose that they represent rude outlying tribes belonging to races which elsewhere had attained to greater culture.
Fig. 11.