MAN FROM THE FARTHEST PAST 
past events save by oral tradition—literally through 
“grandfathers’ tales.” 
Here we may recall the theory, already touched upon in 
Chapter VI, that the Solutrean hunters were the remote 
ancestorsiof the tall, narrow-skulled, fair people whom we 
know as Nordics and who in far later times overran, devas- 
tated, and conquered great portions of Europe and western 
Asia. Much further work needs to be done, however, 
before this hypothesis can be shown to be either true or 
false. 
THE MacGpDALENIAN EpocuH 
The Solutrean epoch, all investigators are agreed, 
formed only an interlude, although a fairly lengthy one as 
man looks on time. Immediately on its heels came the 
Magdalenian culture, whose rise seems fundamentally to 
have been connected with the re-emergence from obscurity 
of the Cro-Magnon race. It represents, however, by no 
means merely a revival of Aurignacian culture, but had a 
very distinctive character of its own. It has left traces 
from Spain to central Siberia, but does not occur, at least 
in its typical form, in Africa, in Italy, or in southern Spain. 
For these reasons some have thought that it originated in 
Asia. Others, however, like Obermaier, regard it, perhaps 
with better reason, as having arisen in the French Pyre- 
nees, mainly out of the Aurignacian, but modified and 
stimulated by other cultural influences, including eastern 
ones. 
Of two things at any rate we may be sure. One, that 
the Magdalenian did not develop out of the Solutrean, 
which it closely followed; the other, that it is associated 
principally with the Cro-Magnon race. The latter no 
longer attained the splendid physical proportions of early 
Aurignacian times. Osborn very plausibly suggests as a 
cause of this decrease in bodily size the severe climatic 
conditions which prevailed during Magdalenian times. 
The Magdalenian culture appears to have arisen during 
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