| AN AFTERNOON AT CHELLES AND THE EARLIEST EVIDENCES OF HUMAN INDUSTRY IN FRANCE. |
By Professor A. S. PACKARD, LL.D.,
BROWN UNIVERSITY.
THE earliest traces of human occupation in France and on the European continent occur at Chelles, near Paris. We have said the oldest on the continent, for apparently still older flint implements occur in England. We refer to the so-called 'Eoliths' or plateau implements, found by Harrison, Prestwich and others in southern England.
The Chellean flint axes are still taken out of a bed of preglacial gravel in the sand pits of Chelles resting directly on the Eocene Tertiary clays. This deposit is overlaid by later paleolithic beds, containing worked flints of the age of the earlier cave-dwellers of Le Moustier, in the Dordogne, and called the Moustierian epoch. Directly above this layer, just below the surface of the soil, occur polished stone axes of the later or recent (Neolithic) Stone Age, and other remains of human industry of the time of the Swiss lake-dwellers, while in the swamps and loam are occasionally found Gallo-Roman antiquities, such as Gallic coins, serpentine axes, and bronzes of the time of the Antonines.
Relics of the French who immediately succeeded the Romans in France are also occasionally dug up. Clovis I. and Clovis II. built villas here, and the site of one of them still preserves the name of 'the royal palace/ The queens of these two Merovingian kings, Ste. Clotilde and Ste. Bathilde, founded a monastery near the royal villa.
Thus a single glance at the walls of the gravel pits near the town shows the successive steps in the history of the region—the different stages in Paleolithic times, as well as the Neolithic or recent Stone Age; so that here are revealed, as perhaps nowhere else so clearly, the overlap of prehistoric on historic times.
It is to be observed that the relics or traces of human occupation also occur in geological strata or beds of definite age, not in caves of somewhat uncertain age, and they are associated with the bones and teeth of quadrupeds, such as the elephant, rhinoceros, horse, deer, the cave bear, etc., all of extinct species.
Hence a visit to this classical locality on a serene though hot July afternoon, in a most attractive region and in most delightful company, was both interesting and memorable.
The pleasant town of Chelles with its outlying villas, gardens and
