PRESroENT'S ADDRESS. 11 



the animal and symbolic representations of which are shared by the 

 contemporary school of rock-painting north of the Pyrenees. Some 

 are overlaid by palimpsests, themselves of Palaeolithic character. 

 Among the animals actually depicted, moreover, the elk and bison 

 distinctly belong to the Late Quaternary fauna of both regions, and 

 are unknown there to the Neolithic deposits. 



In its broader aspects this field of human culture, to which, on the 

 European side, the name of Eeindeer Age may still on the whole be 

 applied, is now seen to have been very widespread. In Europe itself 

 it permeates a large area — defined by the boundaries of glaciation — • 

 from Poland, and even a large Eussian tract, to Bohemia, the upper 

 course of the Danube and of the Ehine, to South- Western Britain and 

 South-Eastern Spain. Beyond the Mediterranean, moreover, it fits on 

 under varying conditions to a parallel form of culture, the remains of 

 which are by no means confined to the Cis-Saharan zone, where incised 

 figures occur of animals like the long-horned buffalo (Bubalus antiquus) 

 and others long extinct in that region. This Southern branch may 

 eventually be found to have a large extension. The nearest parallels to 

 the finer class of rock-carvings as seen in the Dordogne are, in fact, to 

 be found among the more ancient specimens of similar work in South 

 Africa, while the rock-paintings of Spain find their best analogies among 

 the Bushmen. 



Glancing at this Late Quaternary culture as a whole, in view of 

 the materials supplied on the European side, it will not be superfluous 

 for me to call attention to two important points which some observers 

 have shown a tendency to pass over. 



Its successive phases, the Aurignacian, the Solutrean, and the 

 Magdalenian, with its decadent Azilian offshoot — ^the order of which 

 may now be regarded as stratigraphically established — represent on the 

 whole a continuous story. 



I will not here discuss the question as to how far the disappearance 

 of Neanderthal Man and the close of the Moustierian epoch represents 

 a ' fault ' or gap. But the view that there was any real break in the 

 course of the cultural history of the Eeindeer Age itself does not seem to 

 have sufficient warrant. 



It is true that new elements came in from more than one direction. 

 On the old Aurignacian area, which had a trans-Mediterranean exten- 

 sion from Syria to Morocco, there intruded on the European side — 

 apparently from the East — the Solutrean type of culture, with its per- 

 fected flint-working and exquisite laurel-leaf points. Magdalenian 

 Man, on the other hand, great as the proficiency that he attained in 

 tha carving of horn and bone, was much behind in his flint-knapping. 

 That there were dislocations and temporary set-backs is evident. But 

 on every side we still note transitions and reminiscences. When, 



