Primeval Man in the Valley of the Lea. 115
and 110 doubt the time will some day arrive when human bones
will be found, and we shall be able to build up human
skeletons of Palaeolithic age. It frequently happens that the
remains of small bones are found, but in so decayed and
friable a state that it is impossible to identify or preserve them,
or even remove them from the wet sand. When human bodies
are once buried in a stony place where water is able to
filter through, as in the Lea-gravels, such bodies probably
soon utterly perish. As an illustration of a fact of this class
I may say that about four years ago I had an opportunity of
opening several cairns on the mountain-tops of Central Wales.
After the nodular covering-stones forming the cairns were
removed, the Kist Vaens or rude stone coffins were exposed.
On removing the heavy slabs of stone from these coffins, a
bed of fine clay was exposed at the bottom, on which the dead
bodies had been laid in a contracted position, i.e., with the
knees drawn up to the chin, and the body laid in the grave
sideways. The bed of clay was perfectly clean and pure in
colour, but there was no trace whatever of the body in any of
the cairns—every vestige had disappeared. These Kists may
be two- thousand years old—a very small item in the pro-
bable age of the river-terraces of the Lea.
No animal can live long unless water is accessible ; there-
fore in Palaeolithic times, as now, the men found it convenient
to live near the water; the Mammoth, the Reindeer, the
Rhinoceros, the Bison, the Lion, the Horse, and other
animals also frequented the river-margins for drink. It was
on the river-margins that the men chiefly hunted these beasts
with their weapons of stone, the bones and tusks of the animals
being left where we now find them, amongst the constituent
stones of the gravel. I have many times seen such tender
things as leaves, small pieces of wood and small crushed
branches, generally, especially is this the case with the
leaves, very friable. Molluscan remains in immediate con-
tact with the "floor" sometimes occur, and I have seen
them both below and above it, and in contact with the bones
and implements. Three or four feet below the "floor,"
shells are sometimes very common. Both under and above