276 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



caves; they were entirely ignorant of husbandry; they knew 

 nothing of domestic animals ; and unlike their Neolithic suc- 

 cessors they never polished, but only chipped their stone 

 implements. It will be seen, however, that these Paleo- 

 lithic savages were, like the invertebrates, grouped together 

 merely on negative grounds. They all lacked the cultural 

 characteristics of the Neolithic Iberians and Aryans. 



This classification was for the time being a satisfactory 

 arrangement, but the Paleolithic Period as so defined was, of 

 course, of very indefinite extent. Indeed, theoretically it com- 

 prised all the vast and little-known ages of time which elapsed 

 from the moment when our ancestors first deserved to be called 

 human down to the time when the Neolithic immigrants made 

 their way into Europe. And it has always been evident that so 

 soon as any considerable knowledge was gained of the pre- 

 Neolithic epochs, some other classification would have to be 

 adopted. For on the Darwinian theory of continuous or gradual 

 evolution, it is abundantly clear that the first men must have 

 differed from the late Paleolithic hunters, anatomically, mentally, 

 and socially, far more than these same Paleolithic hunters 

 differed from ourselves. 



As a makeshift arrangement the Early Stone Age has been 

 recently broken up into " Early Paleolithic " and " Late Paleo- 

 lithic " divisions, but even this modification inadequately 

 expresses the newly discovered facts, and in the opinion of the 

 present writer the term " Paleolithic " will have to be carefully 

 redefined or perhaps entirely abandoned. 



Let us briefly recapitulate what is now known of the pre- 

 Neolithic men. The Paleolithic Period, as already stated, lies 

 within the Pleistocene or Glacial Period of the geologists, the 

 period of the earth's history immediately preceding that in which 

 we live, or, in other words, the penultimate of the sixteen 

 periods into which it is customary to divide the story of life on 

 the globe. It is now known that in Central and Western 

 Europe the Pleistocene was not a period of continuous glaciation, 

 although in Scandinavia the conditions were in all probability 

 perpetually arctic. In Britain, France, and Germany there were 

 several, probably at least four, glacial cycles ; that is to say, 

 there were four ice-ages or "glacial episodes," with consequently 

 three warm interglacial periods between them. Although a 

 number of subdivisions of the Paleolithic Period are now 



