Cave Dwellers (TROGLODYTES)

Prehistoric races using caves as natural habitations. Relics of their weapons, wares, carvings, bones of animals used for food, and of contemporary wild species as well as their own skeletons are found in succe ive strata of debris, overlaid with soil and calcareous deposits in the caves of Europe. Evidence of at least two great epochs: (1) Pal eolithic of Pleistocene period at close of Glacial Period, during the Drift Period; (2) Neolithic, during which bronze and iron tools were succe ively introduced, and which merges into the Historic Period. The former period is characterized by presence of animals, now extinct in Europe, as mammoth, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, cave-bear, saber-toothed tiger, Irish elk, musk sheep, etc. North Europe was lower than now, South Europe was higher, so that land connected Europe with Africa acro Me ina, and Sahara was ocean. The inhabitants of this period resembled the Eskimos, who are their probable descendants. They had no domestic animals, no pottery, no form of sepulture, but dre of skins, harpoons of bone or flint. The reindeer and Arctic cetaceans, walrus, etc., were abundant in France. In the later or newer Stone Age the Iberians, now represented by the Basques, pre ed the Eskimo northward. They were short, from 4 ft. 10 in. to 5 ft. 6 in. high, with oval orthognathic faces. They had pottery, domestic animals, polished flints, and buried their dead in contracted posture. They were pushed to the mountains by the Celts, of high cheek bones, prognathic, brachycephalic and tall in stature, the builders of cairns and megalithic monuments. They, in turn, were pushed west by Teutons.