ON PEIMITIVB MAN : I. HIS TIMES AND HIS COMPANIONS. 257 



the foot of the Escarpment of the chalk hills — and all the valleys 

 which run at right angles to it northward, over the Chalk, have 

 been excavated since the days in which this hill gravel was formed, 

 and man lived and fashioned those implements, according to 

 Professor Pi'estvvich ; and I must say, as taught by him and by 

 Mr. Benjamin Harrison, it seems to me that there is good ground 

 for adopting this conclusion. There is, therefore, an interesting 

 possibility that Palaeolithic man may date back to a period ante- 

 cedent to the Boulder Clay. I know of no certain evidence of 

 greater antiquity for man in this country. 



There is one other matter that I would say a word upon, 

 because it is of the nature of a generally accepted proposition, 

 but not so completely proved as its general acceptance should 

 require, and that is the meaning of the close correspondence 

 between man of the cave and gravel ages, and the Esquimaux of 

 the north. Palaeolithic man in many ways had similar habits to 

 some Esquimaux tribes. He carved pieces of ivory and bone in 

 the same way as the Esquimaux. There are battle axes, and 

 harpoons, fashioned in bone, which when put side by side show 

 scarcely an appreciable difference between the work of pre- 

 historic man of the Paleeolithic age and that of the Esquimaux. 

 I venture to suggest that there is something to be said in favour 

 of the influence of climatic change in the development of this art, 

 skill, and industry. It is quite possible that that correspondence 

 may be the effect of climate in Europe during a period of intense 

 cold, thoagh it has led to the inference that man migrated north- 

 wards from Britain and Europe, and survives in the Esquimaux 

 as representative of the Palaeolithic period. The reason I ask you 

 to pause before accepting this conclusion is that animals, with 

 which man in the far north is associated at the present day, are 

 found as fossils in gravel beds in our own country, mixed with a 

 large number of animal types which are found living in the 

 present day in Africa. The one group of animals is interred to 

 have migrated north, and the other is inferred to have migrated 

 south. If man is supposed to have migrated north and to survive 

 in the Esquimaiix, we turn round to see if there are no Pal^io- 

 lithic men who migrated southward, who survive amongst the 

 Africans ; and if there be no evidence of incisive art amongst 

 people of the North of Africa which might be compared to those 

 forms of incisive art which you meet with amongst the Esquimaux. 

 And I think there may be a certain possibility of comparison 



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