[Illustration: THE WORLD BEFORE HISTORY--IV Professor JOHANNES RANKE ] PRIMITIVE MAN IN THE PAST & THE PRESENT To the picture of Drift Man that has been drawn for us by the discoveries of human activity in deposits of uniform character and sharply defined age, the much richer but far less reliable finds in the bone caves add scarcely any entirely new touches. Von Zittel says: The evidence of the caves is unfortunately shaken by the uncertainty that, as a rule, prevails with regard to the manner in which their contents were washed into them or otherwise introduced, and also with regard to the beginning and duration of their occupation; moreover, later inhabitants have frequently mixed up their relics with the heritage of previous occupants. [Sidenote: First Dwellers in Caves] This doubt strikes us particularly forcibly as regards man’s co-existence with the extinct animals of the earlier periods of the Drift, the Preglacial and Interglacial Periods. On the other hand, the habitation of the caves by man during the Reindeer Period appears in many cases to be perfectly established, and, according to Von Zittel, the oldest human dwellings in caves, rock-niches, and river-plains in Europe belong for the most part to the Reindeer Period--that is, the second Glacial and, in particular, the Postglacial Period. In the caves there is also no domestic animal, and no pottery or trace of potsherds, in the best-defined strata where Drift Man has been found. In the Hohlefels cave, in the Ach valley in Swabia, a new utensil was found in the form of a cup for drinking purposes or for drawing water, made out of the back part of a reindeer’s skull. Also a new tool in the form of a fine sewing-needle with eye, from the long bone of a swan, such as have also been found in the caves of the Périgord. Teeth of the wild horse and lower jaws of the wildcat, which are found in the caves, perforated for suspending either as ornaments or amulets, are also hitherto unknown, it appears, in the stratified Drift. As both animals are at a later period connected with the deity and with witchcraft, one could imagine that similar primitive religious ideas existed among the old cave-dwellers. In the stratum of the Reindeer Period at the Schweizerbild, near Schaffhausen, Nüesch found a musical instrument, “a reindeer whistle,” and shells pierced for use as ornaments. [Sidenote: Drift Man’s Working Materials] The finds in the French cave districts prove that man was able to develop certain higher refinements of life, even during the Drift in the real flint districts--where a very suitable material was at man’s disposal in the flint that lay about everywhere or was easily dug up; which was worked with comparative ease into much more perfect and efficient weapons and implements than those supplied by the wilder stretches of moor and fen of Germany, with their scarcity of flint.