THE STUDY OF HUMAN PREHISTORY 
complete gap or hiatus between the New and the Old 
Stone Ages in Europe, such as students once thought 
existed, there was an intermediate period when men were 
slowly, and no doubt often with great difficulty, adjusting 
themselves to changed conditions and new discoveries. 
This stage has been given a name of its own, w2z., the 
Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age. It was clearly an age of 
transition. Some of the peoples and cultures which then 
appeared in Europe undoubtedly arrived there from other 
lands; but there also existed some survivors from earlier 
times in that continent itself. 
But we have not yet reached the earliest evidences of 
man’s presence in Europe. Before the Middle Stone 
Age, as we might infer from the name itself, there was 
an Old Stone Age—the Paleolithic Period, as it 1s called 
by prehistorians, who have subjected it, especially in 
France, to intensive study. They have discovered an it 
numerous subdivisions which they have named after 
places in France where typical sites have been found. 
At the very close of the Old Stone Age—merging, in 
fact, with the Mesolithic that followed—is the Azilian, 
named for the cave of Mas d’Azil in the northern spurs 
of the Pyrenees; before that comes the Magdalenian, so 
called after the rock shelter of La Madeleine, in the same 
region; then the Solutrean, from the great open camp of 
prehistoric man found at Solutré, farther east; the Aurig- 
nacian, from the sepulchral grotto of Aurignac, and the 
Mousterian, from the cave of Le Moustier, both in the 
same region as Mas d’Azil; the Acheulian, from St. 
Acheul, and the Chellean, from Chelles, two places in 
mouehecn France; and lastly, the BreeGuelean: oldest 
of all. 
These successive stages overlap the entire vast span 
of the Old Stone Age. They comprise certain periods 
when the climate was warmer than it is now, and others 
when it was far colder and a sheet of ice buried much 
of Europe, as Greenland today. Throughout this epoch, 
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