Flakes (Fig. 106) without number, rude stone-cutters, awls, lance-heads, hammers, saws made of flint or of chert, rest pêle-mêle with bone needles, sculptured reindeer antlers, engraved stones, arrow-heads, harpoons, and pointed bones, and with the broken remains of the animals which had been used as food, the reindeer, bison, horse, the ibex, the saiga antelope, and the musk sheep. In some cases the whole is compacted by a calcareous cement into a hard mass, fragments of which are to be seen in the principal museums of Europe. This strange accumulation of débris marks, beyond all doubt, the place where ancient hunters had feasted, and the broken bones and implements are merely the refuse cast aside. The reindeer formed by far the larger portion of the food, and must have lived in enormous herds at that time in the centre of France. The severity of the climate at the time may be inferred by the presence of this animal, as well as by the accumulation of bones on the spots on which man had fixed his habitation. Indeed, had not this been the case, the decomposition of so much animal matter would have rendered the place uninhabitable even by the lowest savage. [Illustration: FIG. 106.--Flint-flake, Les Eyzies (1/1). (Lartet and Christy.) FIG. 107.--Flint Scraper, Les Eyzies (1/1). (Lartet and Christy.) FIG. 108.--Flint Javelin-head, Laugerie Haute (1/1). (Lartet and Christy.)] Besides the animals mentioned above, the cave-bear and lion have been met with in one, and the mammoth in five localities, and their remains bear marks of cutting or scraping, which show that they fell a prey to hunters. The Irish elk, also, and the hyæna occur respectively in the cave of Laugerie Basse, and of Moustier, but the latter certainly did not gain access to the refuse-heaps, because the vertebræ are intact which it is in the habit of eating. For the same reason also, M. Lartet infers that the hunters were not aided in the chase by the dog. There is no evidence that they were possessed of any domestic animal. There were no spindle wheels to indicate a knowledge of spinning, nor potsherds to show an acquaintance with the potter’s art. In both these respects they resemble the Fuegians, Eskimos, and Australians, and contrast strongly with the neolithic races. [Illustration: FIG. 109.--Flint Arrow-head, Laugerie Haute (1/1). (Lartet and Christy.)] [Illustration: FIG. 110.--Bone needle, La Madelaine (1/1). (Lartet and Christy.)] The broken bones show that the reindeer furnished the more usual food, and next to that the horse, and then the bison. And from the absence of the vertebræ and pelvic bones of the two latter animals, M. Lartet concludes that they were cut up where they were killed, and the meat stripped from the backbone and the pelvis. Their food was probably cooked by boiling, the number of round stones used for heating water and bearing marks of fire, like the “pot boilers” of some of the American Indians, being very considerable.