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Updated: May 1, 2025
Nothing but an actual visit to the Royal Museum of Brussels can give any idea of the importance of the discoveries made in Belgium. The environs of Paris are, however, no less rich. As early as Palaeolithic times the valleys of the Seine and its tributaries were evidently inhabited by a numerous population.
For a hundred generations it must hold absolutely true, that everyone of that time who has issue living now is ancestral to all of us. That brings the thing quite within the historical period. There is not a western European palaeolithic or neolithic relic that is not a family relic for every soul alive. The blood in our veins has handled it. And there is something more.
It has been pointed out that the spine in the lower jaw, to which the tongue-muscle is attached, is so poorly developed in Palaeolithic man that we may infer from it the absence of articulate speech. The deduction has been criticised, but a comparison of the Palaeolithic jaw with that of the ape on one hand and modern man on the other gives weight to it.
As to the flint implements discovered in those caves, to use Lubbock's words, "one may say without exaggeration that they are numberless." The same is true of other palaeolithic stations. It also appears from Lartet's investigations that the inhabitants of the Aurignac region in the south of France partook of tribal meals at the burial of their dead.
Still in spite of the indications of continuity, the civilisation of primitive man in Gaul presents one aspect that is without any analogues in the life of the palaeolithic men of the River Drift period, or in that of man of the New Stone Age. The feature in question is the remarkable artistic skill shown by the cave men of the Dordogne district.
The idea was that in Palaeolithic days, contemporary with the Glacial Age of Northern Europe and America, the climate of Egypt was entirely different from that of later times and of to-day. Instead of dry desert, the mountain plateaus bordering the Nile valley were supposed to have been then covered with forest, through which flowed countless streams to feed the river below.
This type is beyond doubt not Mongoloid, and may have been allied to the Ainu, a non-Mongol race still living in northern Japan. These, too, were a palaeolithic people, though some of their implements show technical advance. Later they disappear, probably because they were absorbed into various populations of central and northern Asia.
Both are most interesting; the first named has an important collection of Palaeolithic and Neolithic remains. The history of Salisbury, happily for the citizens, has not been very stirring, apart from the few incidents already briefly mentioned. Executions in the Market Place seem to have had an unenviable notoriety. The most dramatic of these was the beheading of the Duke of Buckingham in 1484.
He was driving a tiny little haycart with a tiny little horse, and up in the cart was a little red-flanked cow on its way to the butcher's, I suppose. All three man, horse, and cow were undersized; palaeolithic figures; dwarf creatures from the underworld on a visit to the haunts of men. I almost looked to see them vanish before my eyes.
Before ending this chapter, I have still to make good a promise to say something about the neolithic men of western Europe. These people often, though not always, polished their stone; the palaeolithic folk did not. That is the distinguishing mark by which the world is pleased to go.
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