apart from the Chancelade skull[30] to be discussed later, may be divided into three marked groups, though it is well to remember that there is no strict uniformity among all the members of each group. All the skulls of this period, however, are long, for the broad-headed type, so prevalent in Central Europe to-day, did not arrive until the closing phase.

Of the first of these three groups we have only two examples, the mother and son from the Grotte des Enfants, near Mentone.[31] But as these are the earliest in date, and differ in some respects very markedly from the remainder, they have been distinguished by the name of the Grimaldi race, after the owner of the cave, the Prince of Monaco.

This type was small, being less than 5 ft. 3 in. in height, the skulls were of the long variety, having length-breadth indices of 68.5 and 69.2, and the jaws and teeth project, so that they exhibit a character known as prognathism. This latter character has caused the race to be termed negroid, and unjustifiable deductions have been drawn from this term. It has been shown, however, that there is no reason for supposing any affinity between this type and the negro race of tropical Africa.[32] Both of these skeletons were found in a contracted position, and that of the boy was covered with red ochre.[33]

Our second group is the Cromagnon, and is based largely on the skeletons found in the cave of Cromagnon, near Les Eyzies. By many anthropologists this term is used to cover all the skeletons from this period except those of the Grimaldi type, but more recently it has been shown that all these remains cannot conveniently be placed in one group, for the distinguishing characters are but faintly visible in some and totally absent from a large number.[34] The term is now becoming used in a more restricted sense.

The Cromagnon type is tall. The men were often 5 ft. 10 in. or 5 ft. 11 in. high, though the women were frequently much shorter. Their heads were large, larger than the average in Europe to-day, but not very high; they were long as compared with their breadth, having a cranial index of about 74; their noses were narrow, but their faces were short and relatively broad. This combination of a long head and a short face is unusual, and is called disharmonic, and this disharmony is one of the most striking characteristics of Cromagnon man.[35]

It is often thought that this disharmonic trait, the long head and the short face, is evidence of the mixed ancestry of the race which exhibits it,[36] and if this were the case we might expect Cromagnon man to be the result of a crossing of two other races. There is no other evidence to indicate that this was the case, and if such crossing had occurred, it seems likely that it took place before the Cromagnon type reached Europe.

It seems probable that it is to the men of the Cromagnon type that we must attribute the beginnings of that art, which reached its finest development in a later age, and has provided the most conspicuous as well as the most pleasing feature of the upper palæolithic culture.[37]

Lastly we have the type represented by Brünn I., Brüx, Lautsch, Combe Capelle, Barma Grande (one of the skulls from B.G. now in the Musée de Menton, but not the skulls generally known as B.G. 1 and 2), the woman from the upper layer in the Grotte des Enfants, the Calotte du gravier de fond at Grenelle, the Denise fragments, as well as by one or two skulls of the transition period from palæolithic to neolithic found at Ofnet (No. 21, i.) and a few of those belonging to the same period found at Mugem. The type is usually high-headed as well as narrow-headed, and tends to have the orbits horizontally lengthened, the glabella and supraciliaries strong, the fore-head retreating, the nose broad and the upper jaw projecting (alveolar prognathism). The cephalic index is usually between 68 and 72; the stature is moderate or low.[38]

Thus we find during the period of Aurignac three groups of long-headed men, the Grimaldi, Cromagnon and Combe Capelle, and, especially on the Riviera, in the Barma Grande cave and the Grotte des Enfants, skulls which show various apparent combinations of these types, while at Solutré and Laugerie Basse we find the last type showing modifications to some extent towards the characteristics of modern men. These types and intermixed types occupied west and central Europe, so far as it was habitable during the later palæolithic periods, and the combinations of Combe Capelle and Cromagnon characters in the skulls of Obercassel (Magdalenian period) is noteworthy. The earliest in point of time is the Grimaldi, which has been found only near Mentone, and there are reasons for believing that its distribution lay around the western Mediterranean, then an inland sea. This view is supported by the fact that marked alveolar prognathism has been noted among the natives of Algeria and Morocco, and I am told that it is not uncommonly met with in Spain; it is also very marked in Portugal, though here it has been attributed to a different cause. It is, however, of old standing in that country, as it has been noted among the skulls from Mugem,[39] which are believed to date from the close of the palæolithic age. A similar feature has been noted in some of the skulls from the Algerian dolmens.[40]

To the Cromagnon type, pure, it is difficult to ascribe any other skulls besides those from Cromagnon, and those from Lafaye Bruniquel, but some of the Cromagnon characters are well shown in some Barma Grande skulls. The type is said to survive in the Dordogne and perhaps near the western Pyrenees in North Spain at the present day.[41] The Combe Capelle or Brünn type, is seen to