This was probably not less than 50,000 years ago, and may well have been much more. Earlier than the date of these Reindeer men (the Magdalenians, Solutrians and the Aurignacians[9]), in the preceding cold, humid period of the glacial extension (probably from 80,000 to 150,000 years ago) these and other caves were occupied by an inferior race--the Neandermen. They could not carve beasts on ivory nor paint, but could make very good and well "dressed" flint weapons, and could make large fires in and about the caves, both to cook their meat and to keep off the wild beasts (lions, bears, and hyenas), who contended with the strange, low-browed Neandermen for the use of the caves as habitations. On this side of the Pyrenees the Reindeer men have left some wall-pictures, and new discoveries of great importance in the form of rock carvings of human figures as well as pictures and huge figures of horses, etc., are being made in France as I write these lines. But the best preserved and most numerous wall pictures are those of the cave of Altamira near Santander. These comprise some partially preserved representations in yellow, red, white, and black of the great bison, the wild boar, the horse, and other animals. A group representing some twenty-five or more animals (each about one third the size of nature), irregularly arranged, exists on a part of the roof, and others are found in other parts of the cavern. Among the wall-pictures made by ancient cave-men are numerous drawings of human beings in masks representing animals' heads--probably indicating the "dressing-up" in animal masks of priests or medicine men in the way in which we know to-day is the custom among many savage tribes. Twenty-seven of these "decorated" caverns were known in 1910--eleven in Spain, one in Italy, and fifteen in South and Central France--and others are continually being discovered. The most careful and critical examination by scientific men leaves no doubt as to the vast antiquity of these paintings, and as to their dating from a time when the animals painted (including in some cases mammoth and rhinoceros, as well as bison, reindeer, wild boar, ibex, red deer, bear, and felines) were existing in the locality. The covering up of some of the drawings (which are partly engraved and partly painted) by earthy deposits and by encrustations of lime, and the presence in the cave deposits of the worked flints and bones characteristic of the Reindeer men, leave no doubt that these pictures are of that immense antiquity which we express by the words "Quaternary period," "Upper Pleistocene" or "Reindeer epoch."