Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel

126 THE LEGENDS.

We shall see, as we go on in the legends of the races on both sides of the Atlantic, that they all looked to some central land, east of America and west of Europe, some island of the ocean, where dwelt a godlike race, and where alone, it would seem, the human race was preseryed to repeople the earth, while these brutal representatives of the race, the Neanderthal people, were crushed out.

And this is not mere theorizing. It is conceded, as the result of most extensive scientific research :

1. That the great southern mammalia perished in Europe when the Drift came upon the earth.

2. It is conceded that these two skulls are associated with the bones of these locally extinct animals, mingled together in the same deposits.

3. The conclusion is, therefore, logically irresistible, that these skulls belonged to men who lived during or before the Drift Age.

Many authorities support this proposition that manpaleolithic man, man of the mammoth and the mastodon —existed in the caves of Europe before the Drift.

“ After having occupied the English caves for untold ages, paleolithic man disappeared for ever, and with him vanished many animals now either locally or wholly extinct.” *

Above the remains of man in these caves comes a deposit of stalagmite, twelve feet in thickness, indicating a vast period of time during which it was being formed, and during this time man was absent.t

Above this stalagmite comes another deposit of caveearth :

“The deposits immediately overlying the stalagmite and cave-earth contain an almost totally different assem-

* “The Great Ice Age,” p. 411. + Thid., p. 411.