Some time after his return from Abbeville, Mr. Evans, going round the
museum of the Society of Antiquaries in London, found in their rooms
some specimens exactly similar to those in the collection of Boucher de
Perthes. On making inquiries as to their origin, he found that they had
been obtained from the gravel at Hoxne by Mr. Frere, who had collected
them there, together with the bones of extinct animals, all of which he
had presented to the museum, after having given a description of them in
the 'Archæologia' of 1800, with this remark: ... "Fabricated and used by
a people who had not the use of metals.... The situation in which these
weapons were found may tempt us to refer them to a very remote period
indeed, even beyond that of the present world."
Thus, even at the commencement of the present century, they were in
possession, in England, of proofs of the co-existence of man with the
great extinct pachyderms; but, owing to neglect of the subject, scarcely
any attention had been paid to them.
We now come to the most remarkable and most characteristic discoveries
of this class which have ever been made. We allude to the explorations
made by M. Édouard Lartet, during the year 1860, in the curious
pre-historic human burial-place at Aurignac (Haute-Garonne).
Going down the hill on the road leading from Aurignac, after proceeding
about a mile, we come to the point where, on the other side of the dale,
the ridge of the hill called _Fajoles_ rises, not more than 65 feet
above a rivulet. We then may notice, on the northern slope of this
eminence, an escarpment of the rock, by the side of which there is a
kind of niche about six feet deep, the arched opening of it facing
towards the north-west. This little cave is situated forty-two feet
above the rivulet. Below, the calcareous soil slopes down towards the
stream.
The discovery of this hollow, which is now cleared out, was made
entirely by chance. It was hidden by a mass of _débris_ of rock and
vegetable-earth which had crumbled down; it had, in fact, only been
known as a rabbits' hole. In 1842, an excavating labourer, named
Bonnemaison, took it into his head one day to thrust his arm into this
hole, and out of it he drew forth a large bone. Being rather curious to
search into the mystery, he made an excavation in the slope below the
hole, and, after some hours' labour, came upon a slab of sandstone which
closed up an arched opening. Behind the slab of stone, he discovered a
hollow in which a quantity of human bones were stored up.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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