2. Professor Boyd Dawkins draws a sharp distinction between ‘the River-drift men’ and ‘the Cave-men’. I must remark that the term ‘Cave-men’ is not happily chosen; for the professor himself assures us that ‘the Cave-men did not always use caves’, and that ‘the habit of camping in the open air must have been the rule ... because caverns and rock-shelters are only met with in very limited areas’;[1563] while on the other hand he points out that ‘River-drift men’ often lived in caves.[1564] By ‘the Cave-men’ he means those who made implements of what he terms ‘the higher types’, that is, the types which are called after the caves of Le Moustier, Solutré, and La Madelaine. Observing that there were ‘Cave-men’ not only in our own country and in France, but also in Belgium, Switzerland, and Germany, he argues that ‘from this distribution of the implements it is evident that the Cave-man belongs neither to the southern group of the Pleistocene animals nor to the temperate which found its way over the mountain barriers into Spain, Italy, and Greece. On the other hand,’ he continues, ‘the River-drift man must be considered as a member either of the temperate or southern fauna of Europe, because his remains are met with in the regions of the Mediterranean, north [and also south] of those mountain barriers.’[1565]

Granting that no implements of the higher types have been discovered in caves south of the ‘mountain barriers’, it is hardly safe to conclude that the ‘Cave-men’ did not belong either to the southern or the temperate group of mammals.[1566] The question is whether the implements to which the professor refers were characteristic of one palaeolithic race to the exclusion of others. Assuming that such implements do not exist outside the area in which they have been found--a very rash assumption--it does not follow that the men who made them belonged to a race different from their contemporaries whose tools have been discovered in the drift. Only one interment of the Late Celtic Period has been found in Scotland, and that quite recently;[1567] yet there were numerous Celts then in North as well as in South Britain.

Ancient Britain and the Invasions of Julius Caesar — Part 176

The professor also insists[1568] that ‘the absence of the higher types of implement in the camping-places of the River-drift men cannot be accounted for on the ground that they are smaller or ... more perishable’; for, he says, ‘camping-places of the Cave-men have been met with in France [for instance at Solutré] ... in which the implements are associated in the same manner as in the caves’.

Ancient Britain and the Invasions of Julius Caesar — Part 176