It becomes a question whether man at this epoch had any belief in a future life, and practised anything which bore a resemblance to religious worship. The existence, round the fire-hearths of the burial-caverns in Belgium, of large fossil elephant (mammoth's) bones--a fact which has been pointed out by M. Édouard Dupont--gives us some reason for answering this question in the affirmative. According to M. Morlot, the practice of placing bones round caverns still survives, as a religious idea, among the Indians. We may, therefore, appeal to this discovery as a hint in favour of the existence of some religious feeling among the men who lived during the reindeer epoch. In the tombs of this epoch are found the weapons and knives which men carried during their lifetime, and sometimes even a supply of the flesh of animals used for food. This custom of placing near the body of the dead provisions for the journey to be taken _post mortem_ is, as remarked in reference to the preceding period, the proof of a belief in another life. Certain religious, or rather superstitious, ideas may have been attached to some glittering stones and bright fragments of ore which have been picked up in several settlements of these primitive tribes. M. de Vibraye found at Bourdeilles (Charente), two nodules of hydrated oxide of iron mixed with _débris_ of all kinds; and at the settlement of Laugerie-Basse (Dordogne), in the middle of the hearth, a small mass of copper covered with a layer of green carbonate. In other spots there have been met with pieces of jet, violet fluor, &c., pierced through the middle, doubtless to enable them to be suspended to the neck and ears. The greater part of these objects may possibly be looked upon as amulets, that is, symbols of some religious beliefs entertained by man during the reindeer epoch. The social instinct of man, the feeling which compels him to form an alliance with his fellow-man, had already manifested itself at this early period. Communication was established between localities at some considerable distance from one another. Thus it was that the inhabitants of the banks of the Lesse in Belgium travelled as far as that part of France which is now called Champagne, in order to seek the flints which they could not find in their own districts, although they were indispensable to them in order to manufacture their weapons and implements. They likewise brought back fossil shells, of which they made fantastical necklaces. This distant intercourse cannot be called in question, for certain evidences of it can be adduced. M. Édouard Dupont found in the cave of Chaleux, near Dinant (Belgium), fifty-four of these shells, which are not found naturally anywhere else than in Champagne. Here, therefore, we have the rudiments of commerce, that is, of the importation and exchange of commodities which form its earliest manifestations in all nations of the world.