PRIMITIVE MAN.
PRIMITIVE MAN.
By LOUIS FIGUIER.
ILLUSTRATED WITH THIRTY SCENES OF PRIMITIVE LIFE, AND
TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY-THREE FIGURES OF OBJECTS
BELONGING TO PRE-HISTORIC AGES.
LONDON:
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.
1870.
PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION.
The Editor of the English translation of 'L'Homme Primitif,' hasnot deemed it necessary to reproduce the original Preface, in whichM. Figuier states his purpose in offering a new work on pre-historicarchæology to the French public, already acquainted in translationwith the works on the subject by Sir Charles Lyell and Sir JohnLubbock. Now that the book has taken its position in France, itis only needful to point out its claims to the attention of Englishreaders.
The important art of placing scientific knowledge, and especiallynew discoveries and topics of present controversy, within easy reachof educated readers not versed in their strictly technical details, isone which has for years been carried to remarkable perfection inFrance, in no small measure through the labours and example ofM. Figuier himself. The present volume, one of his series, takes upthe subject of Pre-historic Man, beginning with the remotely ancientstages of human life belonging to the Drift-Beds, Bone-Caves, andShell-Heaps, passing on through the higher levels of the Stone Age,through the succeeding Bronze Age, and into those lower ranges ofthe Iron Age in which civilisation, raised to a comparatively highdevelopment, passes from the hands of the antiquary into those of thehistorian. The Author's object has been to give within the limits of[Pg vi]a volume, and dispensing with the fatiguing enumeration of detailsrequired in special memoirs, an outline sufficient to afford a reasonableworking acquaintance with the facts and arguments of the science tosuch as cannot pursue it further, and to serve as a starting-ground forthose who will follow it up in the more minute researches of Nilsson,Keller, Lartet, Christy, Lubbock, Mortillet, Desor, Troyon, Gastaldi,and others.
The value of the