January 6, 1898J 



NA TURE 



235 



glacial beds occur only at intervals and are very fragmentary. 

 Nor in Scotland are there any caves similar in dimensions to 

 those which in England and elsewhere have yielded such 

 abundant traces of Paleolithic man and his mammalian con- 

 geners. If Palaeolithic man ever did exist in Scotland, and there 

 is no reason why he might not have migrated northward from 

 Yorkshire and Wales, yet one could hardly expect to discover 

 traces of his former presence. In Scotland there are no massive 

 limestones, with extensive caverns, in which man could have 

 sheltered, and in which his relics and remains could have been 

 secure from destruction during the advance of the second ice 

 sheet. It is only in the alluvial deposits of interglacial times 

 that such traces have been preserved, but these deposits, as we 

 have seen, were ploughed out and to a great extent demolished 

 by the later sheet of ice. The shreds that remain, however, are 

 of'extreme interest, from the fact that they contain relics of the 

 Pleistocene mammals, with which PaUeolithic man was con- 

 temporaneous ; and there is a bare chance that some day traces 

 of man himself may be encountered in the same deposits. 



Geologists have shown that in the regions which were over- 

 flowed by the second or minor ice sheet no traces of Palaeolithic 

 man, or of the southern mammals with which he was associated, 

 have ever been met with in British superficial alluvia. When 

 found in those regions out of Scotland, they occurred in caves 

 chiefly, and sometimes in the stratified deposits which here and 

 there underlie the upper boulder clay and its accompanying 

 gravels. 



So far as Scotland is concerned, one must look for a period 

 subsequent to the melting of the second great ice sheet for 

 evidence of the existence of early man. After its disappearance 

 important fluctuations in temperature and in the relative level of 

 land and sea took place from time to time, so that the climate 

 and the area of land in Scotland differed in some measure from 

 what is known at the present day. Eventually a period of cold 

 again occurred, not so severe, undoubtedly, as in the two 

 preceding glacial epochs, but sufficient to bring into existence 

 considerable district ice sheets and extensive valley-glaciers in 

 the Highlands and Southern Uplands. Scotland at this stage 

 was partially submerged, and many of the Highland glaciers 

 reached the sea and gave origin to icebergs. The submergence 

 slightly exceeded loo feet, and the marine deposits formed at 

 the time are charged with arctic shells and many erratic blocks 

 and debris of rocks. On a subsequent elevation of the land, the 

 beach formed at this level constituted a terrace, well marked on 

 the coast line in many districts, and now known as the lOO-foot 

 beach. 



There is good reason to believe that the elevation referred to 

 was of sufficient extent to join Britain again to the continent. 

 It is to this stage that the great timber trees which underlie the 

 old peat bogs of Scotland are referred. The peat with its under- 

 lying forest bed passes out to sea, and is overlaid in the Carse 

 lands of the Tay and the Forth by marine deposits, which form 

 another well-marked terrace, the 45 to 50 foot raised beach of 

 geologists. 



Thus the elevation of the land that followed after the formation 

 of the 1 00- foot beach coincided with an amelioration of climate 

 and with the presence of an abundant vegetation, and large 

 mammals, such as the red- deer, the elk, and the B's primigenus 

 roamed through the woods. While these conditions obtained 

 partial submergence again ensued, and the sea rose to fifty feet, 

 or thereabouts, above its present level. Within recent years it 

 has been shown that during this period of partial submergence 

 glaciers reached the sea in certain Highland firths, which would 

 seem to show that the climate was hardly so genial fis during 

 the preceding continental condition of the British area, when 

 that region was clothed with great forests. Ere long, however, 

 elevation once more supervened, and the sea retreated to a lower 

 level. Here it paused for some time, and so another well- 

 marked terrace was formed, which is known as the 25 to 30 

 foot Ijeach. 



There is not any evidence of the presence of man in Scotland 

 during the formation of the 100-foot beach or terrace, but one 

 can speak with certainty of his presence there during the period 

 of formation of the later beaches. If one could put oneself into 

 the position of an observer who, at the time of the 40-50 foot 

 submergence, had stood on the rock on which Stirling Castle is 

 now built, instead of the present carse lands growing abundant 

 grass and grain, and studded with towns, villages, and farm- 

 houses, one would have seen a great arm of the sea extending 

 almost if not quite across the country from east to west, and 



MO. 147 1, VOL. 57] 



separating the land south of the Forth from that to the north. 

 In this sea great whales and other marine animals disported 

 themselves, and sought for their food. Abundant evidence, 

 that this was the condition at that time in the Carse of Stirling, 

 is furnished by the discovery during the present century of no 

 fewer than twelve skeletons of whalebone whales belonging to the 

 genus Balaenoptera or Finner whales, imbedded in the deposit of 

 mud, blue silt and clay which formed the bed of the estuary. ^ 

 This Carse clay, as it is called, is now in places from 45 to 50 feet 

 above the present high- water mark, and is extensively used for 

 the manufacture of bricks and tiles. At a still lower level lies 

 the carse clay of the 25-30 foot terrace. Until the beginning of 

 the present century the clay had been covered by an extensive 

 peat moss, which the proprietors of the land have removed. 

 The question which has now to be considered is — Did man exist 

 in Scotland at the period of the formation of the carse clays and 

 of the two lower sea beaches ? There is undoubted evidence 

 that he did. 



Along the margin of the 45-50 foot terrace in the neighbour- 

 hood of Falkirk one comes upon the shell-mounds and 

 kitchen-middens of Neolithic man. All these occur on or at 

 the base of the bluffs which overlook the carse lands — or, in 

 other words, upon the old sea-coast. Again, in the Carse of 

 Gowrie, a dug-out canoe was seen at the very base of the 

 deposits, and immediately above the buried forest-bed of the Tay 

 Valley. The 25-30 foot beach has been excavated out of the 

 40-50 foot terrace ; it is largely a plain of erosion rather than 

 of accumulation. It is probable, therefore, that many of the 

 relics of man and his contemporaries which have been obtained at 

 certain depths in the 25-30 foot beach may really belong to the 

 period of the 40-50 foot beach. Some of these finds will now 

 be referred to. 



In 1819 the bones of a great Fin-whale, estimated about 72 feet 

 long, were exposed in the carse land adjoining the gate leading 

 into the grounds of Airthrey Castle, near Bridge of Allan, about 

 25 feet above the level of high water of spring tides. Two 

 pieces of stag's horn, through one of which a hole about an inch 

 in diameter had been bored, were found close to the skeleton. 

 In 1824, on the estate of Blair Drummond, in the district of 

 Menteith, a whale's skeleton was exposed, and along with it a 

 fragment of a stag's horn which was said to have a hole in it and 

 to have been like that found along with the Airthrey whale. 

 Mr. Home Drumrnond also states that a small piece of wood 

 was present in the hole, which fitted it, but on drying, shrunk 

 considerably. Unfortunately these specimens have been lost, 

 and no drawings or more detailed descriptions were ever 

 apparently published, though in some geological and archeeo- 

 logical works they have been stated, without any authority, to 

 have been lances or harpoons. Twenty years ago the skeleton 

 of another whale was exposed at Meiklewood, Gargunnock, a 

 few miles to the west of Stirling, and resting upon the front of 

 its skull was a portion of the beam of the antler of a red deer, 

 fashioned into an implement eleven inches long, and six and a 

 half inches in greatest girth ; a hole had been bored through the 

 beam, in which was a piece of wood one inch and three-quarters 

 long, apparently the remains of a handle. The implement was 

 truncated at one end, and shaped so that it could have been used 

 as a hammer, whilst the opposite end was smooth and bevelled tf> 

 a chisel or axe-shaped edge formed by the hard external part of 

 the antler.'^ There can be no doubt that this implement 

 resembled those found alongside of the Airthrey and Blair 

 Drummond whales earlier in the century, and it effectually 

 disposes of the statement that they were lances or harpoons. 

 Dug-out canoes have indeed been found imbedded in the Carse 

 clays at a similar level, so that the people of that day had dis- 

 covered a means of chasing the whale in the water ; one can, 

 however, scarcely conceive it possible to manufacture a horn 

 implement sufficent to penetrate the tough skin and blubber of 

 one of these huge animals, and to hold it in its efforts to escape. 

 It is much more probable that the whale had been stranded at 

 the ebb of the tide in the shallower water near the shore, and 

 that the people had descended from the neighbouring heights, 

 and had used their horn implements, with their chisel-like 

 edges, to flense the carcass of its load of flesh and blubber, and 

 had carried the spoil to their respective habitations. There can 



1 See more particularly Mr. Milne Home's "Ancient Water Lines " (Edin- 

 burgh, 1882), and "The Raised Beaches of the Forth Valley," by D. B. 

 Morris (Stirling, 1892). 



- I described this implement in Ref)orts of British Association, 1889, 

 p. 790. It has subsequently been figured in a Report by Dr. Munro in the 

 Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, 1896. 



