WHOLE VOL. SKELETAL REMAINS OF EARLY MAN HRDLICKA / 



the Giinz, Mindel, Riss, and Wiirm glaciations ; and these were be- 

 lieved to have been separated by three distinct interglacial periods, 

 of which the second was the longest, and followed by the postglacial 

 time which merged with the present. This seemed to agree fairly 

 well with the North American conditions, where five main ice exten- 

 sions have been established, namely, the Nebraskan, Kansan, Illinoian, 

 lowan, and Wisconsin. 



But it gradually became apparent that matters were more complex 

 and irregular. The studies of Brooks, Deperet, Boule, Mayet, Rutot, 

 Steinman, Wiegers, Soergel, Schmidt, Bayer, De Geer, the Russians, 

 and many others in Europe, with those of Leveret, Coleman, Osborn 

 and Reed, Antevs, and many others, in America, have shed a great 

 deal more light on glacial facts and problems, only to show, however, 

 that the subject is not capable of any simple and universally applicable 

 solution. The Ice Age is now seen to have been a vast complex of 

 phenomena and changes which obeyed no simple rule and which 

 varied geographically and even chronologically, as they vary to this 

 day in the areas subject to glaciation. 



Paleontology and human prehistory find it particularly difficult to 

 conform to a system of a quadruple extensive European glaciation 

 with three major warm interglacial periods many thousands of 

 years in duration. Had such alternations been general and severe, 

 involving much change in climate, there ought to be, it would seem, 

 perceptible corresponding changes in the general fauna and in the 

 habits of man. But neither paleontological nor human mappings 

 show such definite multiple marked oscillations. This has led ob- 

 servers, such as Boule, Bayer, and others, including the writer, either 

 to doubt the existence over the man-inhabited areas of the Quaternary 

 of the four pronounced periods of cold with three warm interglacials, 

 or to doubt their intensity. 



In connection with my Huxley lecture in November, 1927,* I have 

 gone with some thoroughness into these questions and constructed 

 several approximate charts which are reproduced in figures 2, 3, and 4. 

 They show the main conceptions of the Ice Age in western Europe, 

 which was the principal territory occupied by early man, and also the 

 actual difficulties of reconciling the paleontological and human evi- 

 dence with the classic claims as to the subdivisions of the Ice Age. 

 Before these charts are introduced, however, it will be useful to 

 outline the general cultural classification of human prehistory. 



' Journ. Roy. Anthrop. Inst., vol. 57, pp. 249 et seq., 1927. Reprinted Smith- 

 sonian Ann. Rep. for 1928, pp. 493-621, 1929. 



