80 



DISCOVERY 



pensable as it is, and as it always will be, Dr. Rice-Holmes' 

 Ancient Britain is the nearest approach to the ideal ; but 

 it lacks, at any rate in its earlier chapters, the vision and 

 mastery that come only from field work. Mr. Burkitt's 

 title covers the whole of prehistoric time, from the dawn 

 right down to the end of the Bronze Age. But the author 

 is obviously most interested in the later portion of the 

 palaeolithic period, and the chapters on Cave Art are 

 by far the best. 



The general arrangement of the chapters is admirable. 

 The author has the French love of classification, particu- 

 larly in relation to clironology. Opposite the first page 

 is a table of archaeological divisions, showing their relation 

 to the glacial periods. We do not agree with all IMr. 

 Burkitt's equations, and we think he should have made it 

 clear that they are still matters of controversy rather 

 than universally accepted conclusions. But every reader 

 will thank him for having the courage to record his own 

 opinions in this irrevocable manner. 



The first four chapters clear the ground for the rest. 

 The first (" Introduction ") concludes with a tabular 

 " Brief OutUne of the History of the Subject " from 1690, 

 when a drift-implement ' was found near Gray's Inn, to 

 1915. when the Abbe Breuil " studied the painted rock 

 shelters at Almaden in the Spanish second style." Pre- 

 siunably ]\Ir. Burkitt did not intend to do more than 

 indicate a few landmarks in palaeolithic research ; but 

 even so he cannot be excused for certain very serious 

 omissions. One of these landmarks was the publication 

 of Ancient Stone Implements by Sir Jolm Evans ; another 

 was the investigation of the llousterian deposits at North- 

 fleet by Mr. Reginald Smith, F.S.A., of the British 

 Museum ; a third was the foundation in 1908 of the 

 Prehistoric Society of East Anglia, which is now, in the 

 opinion of some, the liveliest and most important archso- 

 logical society in England. 



Chapter III, " Man in Relation to Geology," contains 

 a very useful summary of the French and British evidence 

 upon which any attempt at correlating palaeolithic and 

 glacial periods must be based, but as it involves theories 

 and facts of a highly technical kind, it is not discussed 

 here. 



Mr. Burkitt refers on p. 59 to Baron de Geer's methods 

 of dating the retreat of the ice-sheet in Scandinavia by 

 counting each of the layers of sediment deposited during 

 the summer thaw. " By this means their total number 

 can be obtained, which gives us the period taken by the 

 ice to retreat from South Scandinavia to the north. 

 The number is about 5,000, and therefore the retreat 

 took about 5,000 years. Fortunately, these layers con- 

 tinued to be deposited up in the north, in Lake Ragunda, 

 from the moment that it was uncovered by the retreating 

 ice. This lake was drained about the middle of the last 

 century, and the number of layers there was about 7,000. 

 The number of years, therefore, from our own day to the 

 time when the ice was in South Scandinavia is 7,000 

 -^ 5,000 = 12,000 years." We quote this paragraph for 

 the information of those who imagine that Baron de Geer's 



'7An implement of the type associated with the River Drift 

 gravels. 



chronology was not " hitched on " to the present ; though 

 the title to one of his papers — " A Geochronology of the 

 Last 12,000 Years " — should have made his position quite 

 clear ; and his results were provisionally accepted by a 

 distinguished English geologist so long ago as 191 1 

 (SoUas, Ancient Hunters, 191 1, p. 397). 



When we come to the close of the palaeolithic period — 

 the so-called Upper Palaeolithic or Cave Period — we begin 

 to become involved in such a maze of racial movements 

 that we almost despair of reaching any certain conclusions. 

 Broadly speaking, however, there seem to have been two 

 main but intermittent streams of migration — from Africa 

 northwards and from Eastern Europe and probably from 

 Central and Northern Asia westivards. If this was so — 

 and at certain periods it certainly was — we may recog- 

 nise the earliest of these long familiar prehistoric migra- 

 tions that were repeated in later times, as, for instance, 

 in the invasion of Britain by the beaker-folk- and in the 

 conquest of Spain by the Arabs. 



We do not think Mr. Burkitt has improved upon Dr. 

 Osborn's account of the late Palaeolithic migrations, based 

 largely upon the same documentary evidence as Mr. Bur- 

 kitt has used. Tangled as the problem they present 

 undoubtedly is, we think there is a valuable clue to its 

 ultimate solution in the climatic changes which were 

 taking place. The improvement of the climate which 

 took place as the glaciers receded is naturally most familiar 

 to us in North-west Europe, where it created a habitable 

 country for man. But what was happening in the Sahara 

 and in the heart of .\sia ? Surely the reverse. During the 

 last great glacial period (say, 30,000 to 18,000 B.C.) the 

 Sahara must have been a habitable — perhaps even a very 

 desirable — region, fulfilling all the needs of Man the 

 Hunter ; and its gradual desiccation must have meant a 

 steady emigration northwards and southwards. According 

 to Mr. Brooks,' " in the Lower Nile Valley the deposition 

 of gravel ceased, and that of mud began, about 8,000 B.C., 

 indicating that at that time the climate of North-east 

 Africa reached its present state of dryness." In other 

 words, the Sahara — at any rate, the Eastern Sahara — was 

 formed betiveen 18,000 and 8, 000 B.C. Such archaeo- 

 logical evidence as we have fully bears out this hypothesis. 

 Perhaps it was a later wave of the northward migration 

 of Late Palaeolithic times which brought the Mediterranean 

 Race into these islands, and which scattered megalithic 

 monuments along the whole Atlantic seaboard. It is, 

 at any rate, very remarkable that we meet so early with 

 the same puzzling contradictions as we find at the end of 

 the Neolithic Age. It is difficult to account for the spor- 

 adic roundheads^ of the Upper Capsian period in the 

 Tagus Valley and for the stray beakers found much later 

 in South-east Spain and Sicily ; but it is reasonable to 

 suppose that not dissimilar causes have been at work to 



" The beaker-folk, or round-headed people, who introduced 

 the distinctive ceramic type known as the beaker into this 

 country buring the Bronze Age. 



' " The Evolution of Climate in North-west Europe," by 

 C. E. P. Brooks, M.Sc, F.R.Met.Soc, F.G.S., Quarterly 

 Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, vol. xlvii (July 

 1911), No. 199. 



' Occurrence of skulls of roundhead type. 



