Spiratoria On Moranoria Sectory 03
Page 05

And now at the present time we have twenty or more individuals of this Neanderthal type to compare. The latest discoveries are perhaps the most interesting, because in two and perhaps other cases the man has been properly buried. Thus at La Chapelle-aux-Saints, in the French department of Correze, a skeleton, which in its head-form closely recalls the Gibraltar example, was found in a pit dug in the floor of a low grotto. It lay on its back, head to the west, with one arm bent towards the head, the other outstretched, and the legs drawn up. Some bison bones lay in the grave as if a food-offering had been made. Hard by were flint implements of a well-marked Mousterian type. In the shelter of Le Moustier itself a similar burial was discovered. The body lay on its right side, with the right arm bent so as to support the head upon a carefully arranged pillow of flints; whilst the left arm was stretched out, so that the hand might be near a magnificent oval stone-weapon chipped on both faces, evidently laid there by design. So much for these men of the Neanderthal type, denizens of the mid-palaeolithic world at the very latest. Ape-like they doubtless are in their head-form up to a certain point, though almost all their separate features occur here and there amongst modern Australian natives. And yet they were men enough, had brains enough, to believe in a life after death. There is something to think about in that.

Turn back now to Columbus's time. England, destined to dominate the continent of North America, was also practically the discoverer of the same. On St. John's day, June 24, 1497, thirteen months and a week before Columbus saw South America, John Cabot, a Venetian in the service of King Henry VII., from the deck of the good ship Matthew, of Bristol, descried land somewhere on the coast either of Labrador or of Nova Scotia. Cabot, of course, supposed this prima vista of his to belong to Asia, and expected to reach Cipango next voyage. So late as 1543 Jean Allefonsce, on reaching New England, took it for the border of Tartary. Andre Thevet, in 1515, in a pretended voyage to Maine, places Cape Breton on the west coast of Asia. This confusion probably explains the tradition of Norumbega as a great city, and of other populous and wealthy cities in the newly found land. Men transferred ideas of Eastern Asia to this American shore.

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