In Fig. 5[5] are collected some specimens of signs or symbolic figures from the Cave of Castillo, on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees, showing amongst others the ‘hand’ and some figures which may represent hats. A remarkable group of three alphabetiform signs occurs on a fragment of reindeer-horn discovered by M. Piette in the Cave of Gourdan.[6] One of these shows a great resemblance to an A or Aleph. A harpoon of reindeer-horn, again, from La Madeleine,[7] shows a group of eight linear signs, among which we may detect, however, several repetitions. In the face of these and similar examples, are we to conclude with the late M. Piette[8] that there was a regular alphabetic script during the Pleistocene period, which in turn had been preceded by a hieroglyphic system? [Illustration: FIG. 4.] [Illustration: FIG. 5.] The artistic achievements of the men of the Reindeer Period attained such a high level that even such a conclusion could hardly excite surprise. In their portrayal of animal forms--in their power of seizing the characteristic attitude of the creature represented--they show themselves on a level with those later ‘Minoan’ artists of prehistoric Crete and Greece who produced such masterpieces as the wild goat and kids or the bull-hunt on the Vaphio Cups. We now know that the Minoan race had also a highly developed form of linear script. Might not their remote predecessors on European soil have evolved the same? [Illustration: FIG. 6.] That they had sufficient intellectual capacity to evolve a system of writing, can hardly be doubted. There were, no doubt, some inferior elements among the population of the Reindeer Period. It is possible that certain low cranial types of the Neanderthal class may have survived till late Pleistocene times; and the stratified remains, for instance, of the Grotte des Enfants at Grimaldi, near Mentone, show that its occupation by scions of a fine proto-European race--akin to the ‘men of Cro-Magnon’--alternated during a certain time with occupation by a race of negroid intruders presenting characteristics as low as those of the Australian black men.[9] But the prevailing type of skull associated with the interments in the Mentone Caves--those of men with upright jaw and finely cut nose--struck no less competent an observer than Sir E. Ray Lankester as exhibiting a perfection of development and a cranial capacity worthy to be compared with those of civilized Europeans of the present day.