Close upon these came the excavations at Eyzies by Lartet and his
English colleague, Christy. In both these men there was a carefulness in
making researches and a sobriety in stating results which converted many
of those who had been repelled by the enthusiasm of Boucher de Perthes.
The two colleagues found in the stony deposits made by the water
dropping from the roof of the cave at Eyzies the bones of numerous
animals extinct or departed to arctic regions--one of these a vertebra
of a reindeer with a flint lance-head still fast in it, and with these
were found evidences of fire.

Discoveries like these were thoroughly convincing; yet there still
remained here and there gainsayers in the supposed interest of
Scripture, and these, in spite of the convincing array of facts,
insisted that in some way, by some combination of circumstances, these
bones of extinct animals of vastly remote periods might have been
brought into connection with all these human bones and implements of
human make in all these different places, refusing to admit that
these ancient relics of men and animals were of the same period. Such
gainsayers virtually adopted the reasoning of quaint old Persons, who,
having maintained that God created the world "about five thousand sixe
hundred and odde yeares agoe," added, "And if they aske what God was
doing before this short number of yeares, we answere with St. Augustine
replying to such curious questioners, that He was framing Hell for
them." But a new class of discoveries came to silence this opposition.
At La Madeleine in France, at the Kessler cave in Switzerland, and
at various other places, were found rude but striking carvings and
engravings on bone and stone representing sundry specimens of those
long-vanished species; and these specimens, or casts of them, were soon
to be seen in all the principal museums. They showed the hairy mammoth,
the cave bear, and various other animals of the Quaternary period,
carved rudely but vigorously by contemporary men; and, to complete the
significance of these discoveries, travellers returning from the
icy regions of North America brought similar carvings of animals now
existing in those regions, made by the Eskimos during their long arctic
winters to-day.(186)

(186) For the explorations in Belgium, see Dupont, Le Temps
Prehistorique en Belgique. For the discoveries by McEnery and Godwin
Austin, see Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, London, 1869, chap. x; also