_ Aprit 28, 1923] 




¢ 
higher than the quintuple increase upon which Hunt- 
ington and Visher lay stress for 1315. 
The English scarcity from 1581-1603 was equally far- 
reaching, as famine at the same time caused cannibal- 
ism in Ireland and devastated Persia. The famine in 
England from 1694-99, attributed also to “ rains, 
frosts, snows—all bad weather,” might have produced 
as disastrous consequences as that in the 14th century, 
but for the improvement in internal transport. An 
instructive table in Brooks’s volume (p. 155) dis- 
credits the hypothesis that the English famine of 
1315-16 was due to a period of abnormally severe 
weather, as it represents severe winters as fairly evenly 
distributed throughout the half centuries from 1075 
_ to 1425. The discussion of the causes of these famines 
by Thorold Rogers (“ Agric. and Prices in England,” 
vol. i., 1259-1400, 1866, pp. 28-30), whom Huntington 
and Visher quote for facts about the 1315-16 famine, 
gives no support to the view that they were due to any 
progressive change in climate or to climatic severity of 
a special order. J. W. Grecory. 
The Copper Age in Spain and Portugal. 
La Civilisation énéolithique dans la Péninsule Ibérique. 
(Arbeten utgifna med understéd af Vilhelm Ekmans 
Universitetsfond, Uppsala, 25). By Nils Aberg. 
Pp. xiv+204+25 plates. (Uppsala: A.-B. Akad. 
Bokhandeln ; Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz; Paris : 
Libr. Honoré Champion, 1921.) 15 Kr. 
T is a pleasure to peruse the work of an author like 
Dr. Nils Aberg, whose studies are so comprehen- 
sive. Too many prehistorians work and publish in their 
own small area without much reference to cultures 
outside, or occupy themselves with the necessary, 
though in the long run barren, task of extracting the 
more important essentials from the ever-growing mass 
of literature in order to present a concise scheme that 
can be used by others as a basis of study. Dr. Aberg’s 
objective is far wider in scope, for although his main 
interest is naturally in Scandinavia, the whole of Europe 
is really included for the purposes of his work. The 
volume in front of us is only the latest of a number of 
memoirs, the object of which is to trace, from a study 
of the typology of various objects, the directions from 
which came the influences that were at work in Europe 
from Neolithic to Bronze Age times. 
Any prehistorian who has worked on the Continent 
will derive pleasure from the very first page, for the 
_ book is dedicated to Emile Cartailhac. To those who 
have worked with and drawn inspiration from Car- 
_ tailhac such a dedication seems natural. But here it is 
NO. 2791, VOL. 111] 
NATURE 
was exceeded in that of 1437-38, when the rise of j not only a tribute to that wonderful old man, who died 
price from 4s. or 4s. 6d. a quarter to 26s. 8d. was | in harness only a short while ago, for his book, “ Les 
563 

Ages préhistoriques de l’Espagne et du Portugal,” 
published so far back as 1886, still remains a standard 
work on early times in the Iberian Peninsula, and 
again and again the reader will notice the use that Dr. 
Aberg has made of it. 
A great deal of work has been done by Dr. Aberg, 
and a number of collections, both private and in 
museums (not to speak of the considerable literature 
on the subject), has been utilised in the compilation of 
this work. The book opens with a short preface in 
which the author exposes his reasons for studying the 
area and his general views. There follows an introduc- 
tion in which the current views and the literature of the 
subject are shortly discussed. Next, after giving an 
account of the background to the period under discus- 
sion, the development of the megalithic tombs in the 
Peninsula, and the principal objects and types of tool 
found during the Iberian copper age, are described 
and illustrated by numerous and excellent figures 
and plates. The whole forms an exceedingly useful 
study which can only be gathered elsewhere by a 
process of foraging in much larger works. There 
follows an account of a number of sites in Portugal 
and Spain; finally a brief comparative study of 
similar cultures elsewhere, in France, Italy, and 
England. Much local work has still to be published 
by Bonsor and others, and many details still await 
solution, but in the meantime, the volume before us 
gives a clear and rapid account of what has been done, 
and its important bearing on the contemporary cultures 
farther north. The Spanish Peninsula has been 
favoured in having large deposits of metal ores, and so 
a brilliant copper age developed, the influence of which 
was felt farther north in regions where stone tools 
still had to be used owing to lack of metal ores, at a 
time when little commerce was possible. 
The book is lacking in one particular respect, and 
that is in the absence of an account of the Spanish 
“Third Group” rock-shelter paintings. This art 
clearly belongs in date to our author’s period, for many 
of the conventionalisations figured on pottery appear 
on the walls of the rock-shelters. Thus on pages 133 and 
145, decorations engraved on pottery from Los Millares 
and Las Carolinas are illustrated, which can be matched 
exactly by paintings on the rock-shelter walls (for 
example, at Jimena, at Las Figuras, and a score of other 
sites). This art was not purely decorative; it had 
some (as yet imperfectly known) object, and so is im- 
portant in tracing out the civilisation of the period. 
It is true that there has not been as yet any complete 
or satisfactory study published on this subject, so that 
its importance has not been always properly realised. 
