SOME PALEOLITHIC PROBLEMS 



By HENRY BURY, M.A., F.G.S. 



For several years before the war a good deal of attention 

 was paid to the geological position of palaeolithic man, and 

 considerable advance was made in the work of correlating our 

 British results with those of continental observers ; but some 

 important discrepancies and gaps in our knowledge remained, 

 and now that the end of the war is likely to induce a revival 

 of scientific study, it may not be amiss to offer a review of our 

 knowledge of the succession of industries, and of their relation 

 to the changes that have occurred in river-level. 



First of all, however, let us have a clear understanding of 

 the kind of evidence we may expect geology to furnish as to 

 the relative age of implements found in the various formations 

 known as " drift " ; for although this is elementary, it is 

 sometimes ignored even by geologists, and being very in- 

 adequately treated in the principal text-books and popular 

 works on palaeolithic man, is a constant stumbling-block to 

 those collectors who have not had a scientific training. 



The gravels in which most of the early palseoliths are found 

 rest on shelves or terraces on the slopes of our river valleys, 

 and were for the most part laid down under water. They often 

 attain a great thickness, and since the lower layers are the 

 older (where there is any stratification at all), we may expect 

 sometimes to learn the chronological sequence of the imple- 

 ments from the vertical succession of the strata. Unfortu- 

 nately, when a river remains for long periods at approximately 

 the same level, it does not simply pile up strata in vertical series, 

 but swings from side to side of the valley floor, disturbing and 

 rearranging its other deposits ; and for this reason this source 

 of information is only rarely available in a satisfactory form. 



But another direction from which we may obtain chrono- 

 logical evidence is the succession of the terraces themselves ; 

 for since the valleys have been excavated by the rivers which 

 run in them, it follows that the higher terraces are normally 

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