NA TURE 



405 



THURSDAY, JAN'UARY 25, 1912. 



ANCIENT HUNTERS. 

 Ancient Hunters and their Modern Representatives. 

 By Prof. VV. J. Sollas, F.R.S. Pp. xvi + 416. 

 (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1911.) Price 

 I2S. net. 



TO write a history of the early races of mankind 

 is, at the present time, a most bold undertaking. 

 A writer needs to bring to the task not only an expert 

 knowledge of geology, an intimate acquaintance with 

 the structure of man and beast, but also the long 

 xperience of those who have studied the culture — 

 ibove all, the implements of primitive races. The 

 difficulties of the task are increased by the extensive 

 md technical literature which grows in volume year 

 iy year. Prof. Sollas has iaced these diflFiculties with 

 --access, and under the rather inadequate title of 

 Ancient Hunters" produced a book which in reality 

 aims at giving the early history of mankind. 



"I believe," he says in the preface, "this is the 

 first time that a general survey has been attempted 

 — at least in the English tongue — of the vast store of 

 facts which have rewarded the labours of investigators 

 into the early history of man during the past half- 

 century." 



Those who are making a special study of ancient 

 man are indebted to Prof. Sollas for the survey; it 

 will prove no less acceptable to those who wish to 

 make an acquaintance with this subject, for it is 

 written in a simple and interesting style. The text 

 is furnished with a plentiful supply of good and 

 nccurate illustrations. 



We naturally turn first to see what Prof. Sollas has 

 to say concerning the Pleistocene epoch, when his 

 "ancient hunters" were living in Europe. The length 

 [ of that period does not e.xceed, he believes, 300,000 to 

 400,000 years, and accepts Prof. Penck's four terraces 

 on the valleys of alpine rivers as evidence that the 

 Pleistocene epoch was divided by four periods ot 

 .Ulaciation, each followed by a temperate interval, the 

 lourth giving us our present moderate climate. In- 

 deed, according to Prof. Sollas, we do not seem to 

 have left the last glacial period far behind us. He 

 takes the reader back 7000 years, and writes : — 



" From this point — the beginning of the seventh 

 millennium— we look backwards over the last glacial 

 I pisode. The curve of temperature descends in a 

 \ alley-like depression, the bottom of which corre- 

 >ponds with the period of intense glaciation." 



The period which has elapsed since the last glacial 

 period is estimated from the unsatisfactory data of 

 Heim and of Haron de Geer to have been about 

 i7,(x)() years. 



The writer gives one the feeling of living on an 

 I arth with a very unstable climate, and yet in the 

 last 7000 years there seems to have been no 

 change. Prof. Sollas does not think that there is any 

 satisfactory evidence of the existence of man before 

 the beginning of the Pleistocene period. The eoliths 

 attributed to man— Harrison's flints of the Kent 

 Plateau, the sub-crag Hints — are rejected as convinc- 

 NO. 2204, VOL. 88] 



ing evidence of man's existence. The earliest stone 

 implements which carry a conviction to him of human 

 workmanship are those found by M. Rutot in the 

 Misvinian gravels of the valley of the Lys. The 

 earliest remains of man himself — the Heidelberg jaw 

 and the fossil remains from Java — he attributes to the 

 first interglacial period, with the proviso that further 

 evidence may place them at a later date. The Nean- 

 derthal race appeared before the last glacial episode, 

 while the Cro-magnon race succeeded it. In these 

 matters Prof. Sollas is in agreement with most of 

 his Continental colleagues. 



The civilisation of aticient and extinct races of 

 mankind piust be interpreted from our knowledge of 

 j the culture of surviving primitive races. Prof. Sollas 

 has laid hold of that fact, and in many cases used it 

 to excellent purpose. Yet in some cases his infer- 

 ences are not well founded. He sees many points in 

 common between the art of the modern Bushman of 

 South Africa and the race who decorated the caves of 

 Spain and France towards the close of the Pleistocene 

 period. He also regards the Grimaldi human bones 

 found in a cave near Mentone to be remains of that 

 ancient artist race, and holds that the evidence " that 

 Mentone was inhabited in Aurignacian times' by a 

 race allied to the Bushman amounts almost to positive 

 proof." It is true that these Grimaldi people show 

 negroid traits, and so do the Bushmen, but it would 

 be difficult to find two negroid types which are more 

 sharply differentiated in the characters of their skull 

 and face than these ancient and modern negroid 

 races. It is strange that Prof. Sollas does not allude 

 to the best known of the .\urignacian men, the one 

 discovered by Herr Hauser at Combe-Capelle in 1909, 

 nor do the remains found at Furfooz, at Crenelle, and 

 at Engis, come up for consideration ; yet we may sup- 

 pose them to belong to ancient hunters, and 

 to be of importance because of the types 

 which they represent. On the other hand, we 

 find he accepts the peculiar and isolated skeleton 

 discovered at Chancelade, in the south-west of France, 

 as evidence that a race, very similar to modern 

 Eskimos, lived in Europe about the same time as the 

 Aurignacian and Cro-magnon men. Those who have 

 studied the Chancelade skeleton in the Museum at 

 Perigueux will hesitate to accept its identification by 

 Prof. Sollas as Eskimo in character, and will find it 

 difficult to follow him when he traces the dispersion 

 of European Eskimo and other races in the continent 

 of .\merica. 



This book has great merits; it will succeed, and 

 it deserves success. Yet we do wish England had 

 received some attention, were it only a fraction of 

 what has been bestowed on France and neighbouring 

 countries. Cresswell Crags, Kent's Hole, the Oban 

 caves receive a passing notice, but the Thames Valley 

 and its terraces— the very subjects on which Prof. 

 Sollas can give an expert opinion — receive very scanty 

 treatment. The human remains from the loo-foot 

 terrace at Galley Hill and from the submerged strata 

 at Tilbury are passecl over in silence. Perhaps in 

 another edition Prof. Sollas will make these omissions 

 good. 







