Prehistoric Britain / by Robert Munro.

  • Munro, Robert, 1835-1920.
Date:
[1914]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Prehistoric Britain / by Robert Munro. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    94/272 (page 90)
    to the coldness of the climate, was obliged to seek shelter in caves, or improvised huts, and to clothe himself with skins, the prepara- tion of which entailed the use of special tools and instruments. On the whole, the remains of man’s handicraft works disclose an advance on those of the Drift-men; but there was a sufficient sprinkling of the coup-de-poing types to show that both people were of the same race. 4. Aurignacien.—Prior to 1852 the small grotto of Aurignac (Haute-Garonne) was concealed by a talus, and only then inciden- tally discovered by a workman in pursuit of a rabbit. The entrance was closed by a stone slab, and inside were the remains of seventeen human skeletons, which, on the discovery becoming known, were, by order of the mayor of the town, removed and reburied in the parish cemetery. Outside the flagstone which closed the entrance to the cave were found, along with ashes and a hearth made of flat stones, a finger-marked circular hammer-stone used for chipping flints, and “ a great variety of bones and implements; amongst the latter not fewer than 100 flint articles—knives, projectiles, sling-stones and chips, and among them one of those silicious cores, or nuclei, with numerous facets, from which flakes or knives had been struck off. . . . Among the bone instruments were arrows without barbs and other tools made of reindeer horn, and a bodkin formed out of the more compact horn of a roe-deer.” (Antiquity of Man, p. 184.)