Monuments of many kinds scattered over different countries, weapons and implements, relics as they are of a remote past, enable us to gain a closer insight into the manners, customs, and mode of life of our ancestors of the Stone age. We can picture their daily life, which we know to have been one long struggle, without break or truce, for they had to contend, not only with wild animals but with each other, to fight for the use of their caves of refuge, for their hunting fields, and for their watercourses; and later, the first shepherds had to do battle for the pasturage necessary for their flocks. It is only too certain that, from the earliest dawn of humanity, men gave way, without any effort at self-control, to their brutal passions. The right of the strongest was the only law, and wherever man penetrated his course was marked by violence and by death. One of the femora of an old man was found in the celebrated Cro-Magnon Cave, bearing a deep depression caused by a blow of a projectile, and on the forehead of the woman that lay beside him is a large wound made by a small flint hatchet (Fig. 76). This gash on the frontal bone penetrated the skull, and was probably the cause of death, but not of sudden death, for round about the wound are marks of an attempt at healing it.12 According to Dr. Hamy, many of the bones found in the Sordes Cave have very curious wounds. A gaping hole on the right parietal of a woman must have been a terrible wound (Fig. 77). The woman of Sordes, like that of Cro-Magnon, must have survived for some time; the marks of the removal of splinters of bone, which can quite easily be made out, leave no doubt on that point.13 [Illustration: 76.] Cranium of a woman, from Cro-Magnon, seen full face. In the Baumes-Chaudes caves, situated in that part of the valley of the Tarn which belongs to the department of Lozère, Dr. Prunières picked up numerous bones bearing scars, characteristic of wounds produced by stone weapons.14 Some fifteen of these bones, such as the right and left hip bones, tibiæ, and vertebrae, still contain flint points flung with sufficient force to penetrate deeply the bony tissue. Always indefatigable in his researches, Dr. Prunières also mentions having found in the cave known as that of _L’Homme Mort_ bones bearing traces of cicatrized wounds, and he presented to the Scientific Congress at Clermont a human vertebra found beneath the Aumède dolmen pierced with an arrow-head, which is, so to speak, encased in the wound by the formation of bony tissue. [Illustration: 77.] Skull of a woman found at Sordes, showing a severe wound from which she recovered. Of the nineteen crania found in the Neolithic sepulchre of Vauréal two show traces of old wounds. One of them, that of a woman, has three different scars, two of which were of wounds that had healed, whilst the third in the occiput was a gaping hole, which had evidently caused death.