The caves of Furfooz, and especially that of Frontal, are among the most instructive. Dupont has found that in many caves the older remains of the mammoth age are contained in or covered by a diluvial or inundation mud,[28] which seems to be the closing deposit of this age. Now in the Frontal cave this mud remained undisturbed and extended out into a platform in front of the cave. The cave itself had been used as a place of burial, and as many as sixteen skeletons were found in it, with flint implements, perforated shells, flat pieces of sandstone with sketches of figures scratched on them, and an earthen vase. All these lay above the original palanthropic mud floor, and belonged to new tribes which probably knew nothing of their predecessors, whose bones were covered by the inundation mud below. On the platform in front of the cave was a hearth with the ashes of funeral feasts, and around this were found a multitude of bones of animals, of the modern species of the country. The people who used this cave as a sepulchre had evidently arrived in Belgium after the palæocosmic men and the mammoth were not only extinct, but their remains were buried in muddy deposits; though the reindeer and even the wild horse still existed, and the time was long before the dawn of any authentic history in that part of the world. These men have somewhat shorter heads than the old Cro-magnon race, and they are of smaller stature, and with finer and more delicate features. In these respects they resemble the men of the dolmens and long barrows of France and England, and the existing Auvergnats and Basques, and also the Lapps of the far north. Dupont observes that their materials for implements and ornaments came almost entirely from regions to the southward, and hence he infers commerce with tribes in that direction and the existence of enemies in the north. I should rather infer that the men of Frontal had immigrated into Belgium from the south, and that they were a small and poor outlying tribe of a greater people living south of them. Dupont also remarks on their evident care of the dead, a characteristic of the early neocosmic men, their belief in a future life, and the absence of warlike weapons, whence he infers that they were a mild and pacific race--a conclusion which makes against the idea entertained by some, that they may have displaced the formidable palæocosmic men by conquest. [28] Sometimes with angular stones--_argile à blocaux_. Similar illustrations are afforded by the caves and rock-shelters of France, Switzerland, and Syria, and have convinced many of the ablest archæologists of the existence of a decided break between the palanthropic and neanthropic ages. In such a case also it is to be observed that a few decided, positive facts are of more value than any number of examples in which, from local circumstances, the succession may be obscure or uncertain.