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It may be added that, in 1873, the writer assisted at the opening of a number of graves of men of the reindeer period, near Solutre, in France, and they were almost identical in construction with those described by Mr.
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.
Excavations at Solutre have yielded several fragments of yellow, hand-made pottery very insufficiently baked; and other pieces have been found in the peat-bogs of Bastide de Bearn with the bones of reindeer, and worked flints similar to those found in Quaternary deposits.
At best, civilisation advances by spirals. The native of New Guinea still employs stone tools; whilst an Englishman can get a nest of matches for twopence, an Indian laboriously kindles a fire with a couple of sticks. The prehistoric hunter of Solutre devoured the horse. In the time of Horace so did the Concanni of Spain.
In the Solutreen period, so named after the celebrated Lake Station of Solutre, we find stalked arrow-heads with lateral notches, flint-heads of the form of laurel leaves, which are remarkable for their regularity of shape and delicacy of finish; as compared with those of previous periods, the forms are much more delicate and elegant.
The Solutre culture brought in a new style, particularly thin blades with delicate surface flaking which seems to have reappeared in the late Neolithic. The pointed borers, certain arrow-heads and minutely chipped rods of flint are characteristic of the period, and flints of this age are found on the Egyptian and Syrian deserts.
The flints worked by the cave-men of Belgium, the fossil shells so numerous at Chaleux, in the Frontal and Nuton caves, at Thayngen on the frontier between Switzerland and Germany, in Italy, in the stations of anterior date to the TERREMARE beds, have been found the shells of the pearl oyster of the Indian Ocean, whilst in the caves of the south of France, such as the Madeleine, that of Cro-Magnon, Bize in Herault, and Solutre on the banks of the Saone have been picked up the shells of Arctic marine mollusca.
In 1826, Marcel de Serres called attention to the great number of the bones of animals of the equine family found in the neighborhood of Lunel-Viel; at Solutre, the remains of horses cover a great portion of the slope which stretches from. the eastern side of the mountain to the bottom of the valley.
At Solutre, ochre, manganese, and graphite were found; the last named had been scraped with a flint, and the scratches made by it are still distinctly visible. All these fragments of ochre or manganese, red chalk or black lead, were reduced to powder with the help of pebbles, artificially hollowed out.
These customs, strange as they may appear, were evidently practised in honor of ancestors; atavism is as clearly shown in customs and traditions as in physical structure. At Solutre is a sepulchre formed of unhewn slabs of stone. The body of the dead rested on a thick bed of the broken and crushed bones of horses. The remains of reindeer were mixed with the human bones.
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