THE OLD STONE AGE 
THE CapsiAN CULTURE OF SPAIN 
We must not close this brief account of the Old Stone 
Age without making some reference to human activities 
in Spain during that period. Enough has already come 
to light in that country to show that it played a part in the 
story of early man no less important than that of France 
itself. Nor is this at all surprising, for the Spanish penin- 
sula has always served as a highway for the migrations 
back and forth between Africa and Europe of both races 
and cultures. This has been true throughout historical 
times, and now research is showing that it was also the 
case in the prehistoric period. 
During the Ice Age the lowlands of Spain, owing to their 
more southern position, escaped burial under great ice 
fields like those which spread over so much of the North- 
ern Hemisphere. Glaciers were formed in the mountains, 
but they did not flow very far down the valleys before they 
reached their melting point. Obermaier, our leading au- 
thority in this field, believes that the interglacial stages in 
Spain included phases when the climate was more humid 
and others when it was drier than that of the present. He 
thinks, too, that the vast accumulations of sand and clay 
which cover the lower slopes of many of the Spanish moun- 
tain chains were not laid down during the glacial stages 
but during the more humid interglacial periods. 
Owing to its milder climate the older “‘warm’” types of 
animal life, like the southern and the straight-tusked ele- 
phants, the Etruscan and Merck’s rhinoceros, the hippo- 
potamus, and the striped hyena, were able to survive far 
longer in Spain than in most parts of Europe. For the 
same reason the northern or “‘cold”’ fauna, including forms 
like the hairy mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, the rein- 
deer, and the musk ox, succeeded in getting no farther 
down than the extreme north of the peninsula. 
So far Spain has revealed no traces of the Pre-Chellean 
culture, but Chellean and Acheulian remains occur in all 
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