Early Records.
Prior to the publication of Lyell's Antiquity of Man (6th February 1863), a few discoveries of human bones associated with those of extinct mammalia had been recorded, but for various reasons they failed to attract much attention from the anthropologists of the day. Subsequent to that date such discoveries were more frequent, but they are so widely scattered that it would be confusing to describe them in chronological order. It will, therefore, be more convenient to treat the former in the order of their discovery, and the latter in groups according to their geographical distribution.
The Cave of Bise.
In 1828 M. Tournal, keeper of the Museum of Narbonne, described the finding of human bones and teeth, objects of flint and bone, together with fragments of rude pottery, in the Cave of Bise (Aude), associated with bones of rhinoceros, hyæna, bear, reindeer, etc. These relics were embedded in clayey mud cemented by stalagmite, and M. Tournal distinctly declared that they had not been washed into the cave by any "diluvial catastrophe." The cave was subsequently explored by MM. Marcel de Serres, Brinckmann, Julien, and Cazalis de Fondouce, who also disinterred from it flint and bone objects, some of the latter showing traces of engravings of Magdalénien types. According to Marcel de Serres, the human bones were exactly in the same chemical condition as those of the extinct mammalia. In the upper layer fragments of pottery of Neolithic forms were found, and hence M. Desnoyers disputed the great antiquity assigned by the discoverers to the human remains. About the same time M. Chrystal of Montpellier discovered in the environs of Pondres (Gard), human bones in a clay deposit, which contained bones of the hyæna and rhinoceros, and of which an account was published in 1829, under the title, Notice sur les ossements humains des cavernes du Gard. [1]
- ↑ For reference to the literature on these discoveries, see Hamy's Paleontologie Humaine, p. 289; and Lyell's Antiquity of Man, p. 59.
