MAN FROM THE FARTHEST PAST 
the first of those three minor advances of the ice which 
occurred at intervals after the close of the last or Wurm 
glacial stage. Osborn regards it as beginning about 
18,000 years ago, although others have put it rather later. 
All agree, however, in regarding it as a comparatively long 
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Fic. 50. Magdalenian flint implements, including a graving tool. After de 
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epoch, considerably longer than the Solutrean, and lasting 
altogether not less than 3,000 or 4,000 years. Most pains- 
taking study, mainly by French investigators, has led to 
its division into three phases: the Lower or oldest, the 
Middle, and the Upper. Of these the first seems to have 
been at least as long as the other two combined. 
With the gradual increase of both cold and humidity at 
the end of the Solutrean, the glaciers of the Alps, of 
Scandinavia, and of Great Britain once more advanced, 
although not by any means as far as they had done during 
the Wurm or last really great glaciation. Nevertheless the 
cold and the heavy falls of wet snow compelled mankind 
to seek shelter in the mouths of caves or at least under 
overhanging cliffs. Forests gradually overgrew the low- 
lands of western Europe, interspersed with meadows and 
swamps, and around the borders of the greatly expanded 
ice fields bleak tundra conditions prevailed. This phase 
of the Magdalenian epoch is that of the Buhl postglacial 
[214] 
