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I collected a few implements, one surface of which offered a clean fracture, while the other represented the cutting edge. According to Mr. De Mortillet, such instruments were not intended to have a handle. They were capable of serving as paring knives and saws, but they were especially designed for scraping bones and skins.
M. Gabriel de Mortillet, indeed, most indefatigable of theorists, has even pointed out four stages of culture, marked by four different types of weapons, into which he subdivides the Older Stone Age.
In ancient symbology it was a symbol of eternal life. M. de Mortillet, who in 1866 published a work entitled "Le Signe de la Croix avant le Christianisme," found in the very earliest epochs three principal symbols of universal occurrences; viz., the circle, the pyramid, and the cross.
Mortillet divides the prehistoric period, as a whole, into four epochs. The first of these is the preglacial, which he estimates as comprising seventy-eight thousand years; the second is the glacial, covering one hundred thousand years; then follows what he terms the Solutreen, which numbers eleven thousand years; and, finally, the Magdalenien, comprising thirty-three thousand years.
As some of these rock-basins are 500, others more than 2000 feet deep, having their bottoms in some cases 500, in others 1000 feet below the level of the sea, and having areas from 20 to 50 miles in length and from 4 to 12 in breadth, we may well be startled at the boldness of this hypothesis. The following are the facts and train of reasoning which induced M. de Mortillet to embrace these views.
There is also in the establishment a special library in which has been collected by M. Gabriel de Mortillet all the books relating to prehistoric antiquities, and which is open free on certain days to the public. It is found that insects preserve their colors better under yellow glass than in any other color. The curtains of entomological show-cases and the blinds of the room should be yellow.
Gabriel de Mortillet, one of the most industrious students of prehistoric archaeology, ventured to give a tentative estimate as to the numbers of years involved in each period. He of course claimed for this nothing more than the value of a scientific guess. It is, however, a guess based on a very careful study of all data at present available.
Two perforated stone plaques from Volosova, figured by Dr. Of these Russian objects referred to by Dr. It is not perforated. Dr. Munro does not dispute the genuine character of many strange figurines in flint, from Volosova, though the redoubtable M. de Mortillet denounced them as forgeries; they had the misfortune to corroborate other Italian finds against which M. de Mortillet had a grudge.
Mortillet, educated by priests, hated and suspected all of them. M. Cartailhac suspected "clericals," as to the Spanish cave paintings, but acknowledged his error. I can guess no motive for the ponderous bulk of Portuguese forgeries, and am a little suspicious of the tendency to shout "Forgery" in the face of everything unfamiliar. The things ought to be inspected in themselves.
De Mortillet, on the other hand, dwells very earnestly on the mode of inhumation at Solutre, and sees in the juxtaposition of human remains and the DEBRIS of hearths but the result of displacement, and of the regular turning upside down of which the hill of Solutre has been the scene.
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