3.  The conclusion is, therefore, logically irresistible, that these skulls belonged to men who lived during or before the Drift Age.

Many authorities support this proposition that man—­palæolithic man, man of the mammoth and the mastodon—­existed in the caves of Europe before the Drift.

“After having occupied the English caves for untold ages, palæolithic man disappeared for ever, and with him vanished many animals now either locally or wholly extinct."[1]

Above the remains of man in these caves comes a deposit of stalagmite, twelve feet in thickness, indicating a vast period of time during which it was being formed, and during this time man was absent.[2]

Above this stalagmite comes another deposit of cave-earth: 

“The deposits immediately overlying the stalagmite and cave-earth contain an almost totally different assemblage

[1.  “The Great Ice Age,” p. 411.

2.  Ibid., p. 411.]

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of animal remains, along with relics of the neolithic, bronze, iron, and historic periods.

“There is no passage, but, on the contrary, a sharp and abrupt break between these later deposits and the underlying palæolithic accumulations."[1]

Here we have the proof that man inhabited these caves for ages before the Drift; that he perished with the great mammals and disappeared; and that the twelve feet of stalagmite were formed while no men and few animals dwelt in Europe.  But some fragment of the human race had escaped elsewhere, in some other region; there it multiplied and replenished the earth, and gradually extended and spread again over Europe, and reappeared in the cave-deposits above the stalagmite.  And, in like manner, the animals gradually came in from the regions on which the Drift had not fallen.

But the revelations of the last few years prove, not only that man lived during the Drift age, and that he dwelt on the earth when the Drift fell, but that he can be traced backward for ages before the Drift; and that he was contemporary with species of great animals that had run their course, and ceased to exist centuries, perhaps thousands of years, before the Drift.

I quote a high authority: 

“Most of the human relics of any sort have been found in the more recent layers of the Drift.  They have been discovered, however, not only in the older Drift, but also, though very rarely, in the underlying Tertiary.  For instance, in the Upper Pliocene at St. Prest, near Chartres, were found stone implements and cuttings on bone, in connection with relics of a long-extinct elephant (Elephas meridionalis) that is wholly lacking in the Drift.  During the past two years the evidences of human existence in the Tertiary period, i. e., previous to the age of mammoths

[1.  “The Great Ice Age,” p. 411.]

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