172 EARLY MAN IN BRITAIN. [CHAP. vi. 



The section, Fig. 38, is further remarkable, for the 

 remains found in it are proof that man was a contem- 

 porary of the hippopotamus and the straight-tusked 

 elephant, as well as of the urus and the reindeer, in the 

 valley of the Ouse. 



General Conclusions as to the River-drift Man. 



From the facts recorded in the preceding pages the 

 readerwill be able to gather that the River-drift manhunted 

 the reindeer, and the other arctic animals, in southern 

 England and in France, and that he was a contemporary 

 of the African elephant in Spain, and possibly of the 

 pigmy hippopotamus in Greece. It is also clear that he 

 .'followed the chase over the Mediterranean area, where the 

 only obstacles to his passage from Spain to Africa, from 

 Calabria to Sicily, Malta, and Africa, or from the Pelo- 

 ponnese to Palestine, would be offered by the rivers and 

 / morasses (see Map, Fig. 24). It is impossible to doubt 

 but that he wandered either from Palestine to India or 

 India to Palestine. His implements throughout this 

 wide region prove him to have been in the same low 

 stage of culture, alike in the sombre forests of oak and 

 pine in Britain, and when surrounded by the luxuriant 

 vegetation of the Indian jungle. From this distribution 

 over three continents it may be inferred that man was in 

 this stage of culture for a very long period ; for it would 

 have been impossible for this culture to have been 



proof that these animals were ever driven away from the lower grounds 

 in the south of England or in France by the development of ice or by the 

 extreme severity of climate. The severity of the winters during the 

 sojourn of Palaeolithic man in the valleys of the Somme and the Seine, is, 

 however, as Prestwich has pointed out, proved by the large blocks of 

 stone brought down by the ice and embedded in the gravel. 



