PRIMITIVE MAN. [Illustration: A Family of the Stone Age (Frontispiece).] PRIMITIVE MAN. By LOUIS FIGUIER. Revised Translation. ILLUSTRATED WITH THIRTY SCENES OF PRIMITIVE LIFE, AND TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY-THREE FIGURES OF OBJECTS BELONGING TO PRE-HISTORIC AGES. "Arma antiqua manus, ungues, dentesque fuerunt. Et lapides, et item silvarum fragmina rami. Et flamma atque ignes, postquam sunt cognita primum. Posterius ferri vis est ærisque reperta; Et prior æris erat quam ferri cognitus usus." _Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, lib. V., v. 1281-5._ LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY. 1870. PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION. [Illustration] The Editor of the English translation of 'L'Homme Primitif,' has not deemed it necessary to reproduce the original Preface, in which M. Figuier states his purpose in offering a new work on pre-historic archæology to the French public, already acquainted in translation with the works on the subject by Sir Charles Lyell and Sir John Lubbock. Now that the book has taken its position in France, it is only needful to point out its claims to the attention of English readers. The important art of placing scientific knowledge, and especially new discoveries and topics of present controversy, within easy reach of educated readers not versed in their strictly technical details, is one which has for years been carried to remarkable perfection in France, in no small measure through the labours and example of M. Figuier himself. The present volume, one of his series, takes up the subject of Pre-historic Man, beginning with the remotely ancient stages of human life belonging to the Drift-Beds, Bone-Caves, and Shell-Heaps, passing on through the higher levels of the Stone Age, through the succeeding Bronze Age, and into those lower ranges of the Iron Age in which civilisation, raised to a comparatively high development, passes from the hands of the antiquary into those of the historian. The Author's object has been to give within the limits of a volume, and dispensing with the fatiguing enumeration of details required in special memoirs, an outline sufficient to afford a reasonable working acquaintance with the facts and arguments of the science to such as cannot pursue it further, and to serve as a starting-ground for those who will follow it up in the more minute researches of Nilsson, Keller, Lartet, Christy, Lubbock, Mortillet, Desor, Troyon, Gastaldi, and others.