It is further significant that there is evidence to show that the larger and stronger race was that which prevailed in 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 that reduced the land to its present limits, and that the feebler race which succeeded came in as the appropriate accompaniment of a diminished land-surface and a less genial climate in the early historic period. The older races are those usually classed as palæolithic, and are supposed to antedate the period of polished stone; but this may, to some extent, be a prejudice of collectors, who have arrived at a foregone conclusion as to distinctions of this kind. Judging from the great cranial capacity of the older race and the small number of their skeletons found, it might be fair to suppose that they represent rude outlying tribes belonging to nations which elsewhere had attained to greater population and culture.
Lastly, all of these old European races were Turanian, Mongolian, or American in their head-forms and features, as well as in their habits, implements, and arts. In other words, their nearest affinities were with races of men which in the modern world are the oldest and most widely distributed.
The reader, reflecting on what he has learned from history, may be disposed here to ask, Must we suppose Adam to have been one of these Turanian men, like the 'Old Man of Cro-magnon'? In answer, I would say that there is no good reason to regard the first man as having resembled a Greek Apollo or an Adonis. He was probably of sterner and more muscular mould. But he was probably more akin to the more delicate and refined race represented by the solitary skull of Truchère, while the gigantic palæocosmic men of the European caves are more likely to have been representatives of that terrible and powerful race who filled the antediluvian world with violence, and who reappear in postdiluvian times as the Anakim and traditional giants, who constitute a feature in the early history of so many countries. Perhaps nothing is more curious in the revelations as to the most ancient cave men than that they confirm the old belief that there were 'giants in those days.' At the same time we must bear in mind that the more diminutive race which survived must have existed previously in some part of the world, and must have furnished the survivors of the succeeding subsidence (see illustration on p. [82]).
And now let us pause for a moment to picture these so-called palæolithic men. What could the 'Old Man of Cro-magnon' have told us, had we been able to sit by his hearth and listen understandingly to his speech?—which, if we may judge from the form of his palate-bones, must have resembled more that of the Americans or Mongolians than of any modern European people. He had, no doubt, travelled far, for to his stalwart limbs a long journey through forests and over plains and mountains would be a mere pastime. He may have bestridden the wild horse, which seems to have abounded at the time in France, and he may have launched his canoe on the waters of the Atlantic. His experience and memory might extend back a century or more, and his traditional lore might go back to the times of the first mother of our race. Did he live in that wide post-pliocene continent which extended westward through Ireland? Did he know and had he visited the more cultured nations that lived in the great plains of the Mediterranean Valley, or on that nameless river which flowed through the land now covered by the German Ocean? Had he visited or seen from afar the great island Atlantis, whose inhabitants could almost see in the sunset sky the islands of the blest? Could he have told us of the huge animals of the antediluvian world, and of the feats of the men of renown who contended with these animal giants? We can but conjecture all this. But, mute though they may be as to the details of their lives, the man of Cro-magnon and his contemporaries are eloquent of one great truth, in which they coincide with the Americans and with the primitive men of all the early ages. They tell us that primitive man had the same high cerebral organisation which he possesses now, and, we may infer, the same high intellectual and moral nature, fitting him for communion with God and headship over the lower world. They indicate also, like the mound-builders, who preceded the North American Indian, that man's earlier state was the best—that he had been a high and noble creature before he became a savage. It is not conceivable that their high development of brain and mind could have spontaneously engrafted itself on a mere brutal and savage life. These gifts must be remnants of a noble organisation degraded by moral evil. They thus justify the tradition of a Golden and Edenic Age, and mutely protest against the philosophy of progressive development as applied to man, while they bear witness to the similarity in all important characters of the oldest prehistoric men with that variety of our species which is at the present day at once the most widely extended and the most primitive in its manners and usages. [19]
[19] Perhaps no feature of this early human age is more remarkable than its artistic productions. Recent testimony, more especially that of the very careful explorers of the deposits at Spy, in Belgium, seems to show existence of the potter's art, though this until lately was denied. These people ornamented their clothing with pearly and coloured shells, and made beautiful necklaces. We have already noticed that found in the cave of Goyet. At Sordes, in the Pyrenees, in a very old interment of this period, there was a necklace of forty-three teeth of the cave lion and cave bear, carved with figures of animals (see p. [71]). The handle of a piercer, represented on p. [59], is a marvel of skilful adaptation of an animal form to produce a handle fitted to be firmly and conveniently grasped by the human hand. The figure of the mammoth on p. [68] shows how a few bold lines may produce a vigorous and truthful sketch; and multitudes of such carvings and drawings have been found in France as well as in Germany and Belgium. Even the chipping of flint is an art requiring much skill to produce the fine knives, spears, &c., so commonly found, and there is evidence that these were fitted into strong and probably artistic handles. All this and much more testifies to the fact that our palæocosmic men were no mean artists as well as artificers.
OUTLINE OF MAMMOTH, CARVED ON A PLATE OF IVORY, FROM THE CAVE OF LA MADELEINE