112 EARLY MAN IN BRITAIN. [CHAP. v. 



France. Malta, Sicily, and Crete must have been the 

 higher portions of a continent, now submerged, when the 

 pigmy hippopotamus lived in all three ; and the Apen- 

 nines, the mountains of Sardinia, Greece, Asia Minor, 

 and the Atlas, must have been connected by land with 

 the mountains of Crete and the Cyclades to allow of the 

 distribution of the living ibexes. For all these animals 

 to have arrived at the places where they are found, it is 

 necessary that the whole Mediterranean area should be 

 lifted up 400 fathoms above its present level, which 

 would result in its being reduced to the two deep land- 

 locked seas of Fig. 24, divided from each other by the 

 belt of land reaching from Cape Bon (Tunis) to Malta, 

 Sicily, and Calabria. It may further be remarked that, 

 while a large portion of the present Mediterranean was 

 dry land, the Sahara was occupied by a prolongation of 

 the Atlantic far into the region south of the Atlas moun- 

 tains. 1 



From these considerations it is evident that Pleisto- 

 cene Europe must be looked upon as intimately connected 

 with Africa on the south and with Asia on the east, and 

 that it offered no barriers to the migration of Asiatic and 

 African animals as far to the west as Britain and Ireland. 



Evidence as to Climate. 



The range of the northern and southern mammalia 

 over Pleistocene Europe is indicated respectively by the 

 horizontal and vertical dotted lines in the above Map 

 (Fig. 24), and from their examination it will be seen that 

 Europe is divided into three distinct zones ; 1st, the 

 northern, into which the southern animals never pene- 



1 For proof of this see Cave-hunting, chap. x. 



