American citizen. [volume] (Butler, Butler County, Pa.) 1863-1872, 1864-08-31
NUMBER 81.
Singular Cave Researches.

Some years ago interesting discoveries
OF human remains were made in caves in
the Southwestern partof France, and the
British Parliament has appropriated e1,-
600 to purchase one of these caves, to be
placed under charge of Professor Owen on
behalf of the British Museum. The Man.
chester Guardian gives the following par
ticulars about these caves and their con-
tents
The locality of the caves is the de-
partment of Dordogne, in the province of
Perigord. 1t is chiefly on the banks of
tributaries of the river Dordogne (Which
reaches the seaa little North of BordeauxE
that the caverns are found. In the val
ley Of the Vazere one of the principal of
these tributaries, are several caverns, one
oil which, that of Eyzics, was bot last
year by Messrs. Il. Lartct and III. Chris
ty, two eminent geologists. These gen
| tlemen divided the floor of the cave into
compartments, and, witha generosity wor-
thy, of all praise, they have sent speci-
mems Of the blocks thus obtained to the
principal museums in Europe and else
where. In this way Mr. Plant received,
about fortnight ago, for the Stafford Roy
al Museum, a slab weighing about five
hundred weight. 1t was broken in the
journey into two parts, each of which has
been mounted under glass shade The
shaking it had received on the way rub
bed OFT a quantity of debris weighing 20
pounds, and this Mr.. Plant has carefully
washed and sifted, and separated atom
from atom. His patience has been fully
rewarded, as he has found articles of the
deepest interest. Before entering intode-
tails it may be well to say that by far the
largest number of bones found in the cav
erns Of Perigord are those of the reindeer,
an animal which has not beon known With
IN the historic period south of the north
ern shores of the Baltic. 1t is impossible
even to approximate to the antiquity of an
age so remote; but Sir Charles Lyell, in
his " Antiquity of Man." estimates that
the cave-dwellers, tokens Of whose man
ners Of life we are about to describe. -four
ished not less than from ten to fifteen
thousand years ago. These tokens consist
OF compost mass of earth, charcoal, flint
weapons and tools, bones, needles &C.,
which have been hardened into u solid az
glomerate. chiefly by the action of the cal
carous droppings from the roof of the cave.
This agglomerate, Or breccia, as it is tech
nically styled, has formed an artificial floor
to the cave Of various thicknesses, from
three to ten inches. The practice of the
ancient inhabitants of throwing down the
bones and other remnants of their feasts
upon the floor Of the cave in which they
continued to dwell, receives illustration
from the description given by the Danish
missionary of the last century, Hans
Egede, of the habits Of the Exquimaux.
He says their huts were veritable char
nel-houses, heaped up with fat and the raw
flesh of mammals and fish, which, to-
gether with the remnants of former feasts,
created smell which European could
not endure, but which did not incommode
a native in the least.
" AT some period subsequent to the hu-
man occupation of the cavern a flood has
rushed through it, bringing in its course,
and leaving in the cave, a number of
boulder stones. These have been fixed to
the artificial floor of breccia by the slow
but unfailing mason-the droppings from
the chalk strata overhead"
The articles in the Stafford Museum in
clude flint knives, bone needles, broken
teeth, and similar objects The conclu-
sion deducted from the exploration of these
caves is that human race inhabited the
caves in the region since called Perigord
at the same time as the reindeer, the au-
roch, and other animals which are now
only found in extreme ATTITUDES; that this
people had no knowledge of the use of
metals, their only arms and tools being
either of broken and unpublished fints, or
of bones or horns of animals that they
lived upon the produce of the chase aud
by fishing; that they had no domesticated
animal, neither dog nor cat, else some por-
tions of the bones and sinews that have
been found would have been eaten, and
some remains of the dog would have been
discovered; and that they were clothed
in skins, which were sewn with bone nee
dies and string made out of the sinews
and tendons of the legs of their prey.
~-~><
gA What business does your
husband follow p asked a person
who was engaged in noting the oc-
cupations of our citizens lately. of a.