president's address. 15 



it had oscillated in a South-Western direction. All this must be regarded 

 as corroborating the view long ago expressed by Boyd Dawkins ' that 

 some part of the old Cave race may still be represented by the modern 

 Eskimos. Testut's comparison of the short-statured Magdalenian skele- 

 ton from the rock shelter of Chancelade in the Dordogne with that 

 of an Eskimo certainly confirms this conclusion. 



On the other hand, the evidence, already referred to, of an exten- 

 sion of the Late Palaeolithic culture to a North African zone, including 

 rock-sculptures depicting a series of animals extinct there in the later 

 Age, may be taken to favour the idea of a partial continuation on that 

 side. Some of the early rock-sculptures in the south of the continent, 

 such as the figure of a walking elephant reproduced by Dr. Peringuey, 

 afford the cleai'est existing parallels to the best Magdalenian examples. 

 There is much, indeed, to be said for the view, of which Sollas is an 

 exponent, that the Bushmen, who at a more recent date entered that 

 region from the North, and whose rock-painting attained such a high 

 level of naturalist art, may themselves be taken as later representatives 

 of the same tradition. In their human figures the resemblances 

 descend even to conventional details, such as we meet with at Cogul 

 and Alpera. Once more, we must never lose sight of the fact that from 

 the Early Aurignacian Period onwards a negroid element in the broadest 

 sense of the word shared in this artistic culture as seen on both sides 

 of the Pyrenees. 



At least we now know that Cave Man did not suffer any sudden 

 extinction, though on the European side, partly, perhaps, owing to 

 the new climatic conditions, this culture underwent a marked degenera- 

 tion. It may well be that, as the osteological evidence seems to imply, 

 some outgrowth of the old Cro-Magnon type actually perpetuated 

 itself in the Dordogne. We have certainly lengthened our knowledge 

 of the Palaeolithic. But in the present state of the evidence it seems 

 better to subscribe to Cartailhac's view that its junction with the 

 Neolithic has not yet been reached. There does not seem to be any 

 real continuity between the culture revealed at Maglemose and that of 

 the immediately superposed Early Neolithic stratum of the shell- 

 mounds, which, moreover, as has been already said, evidence a change 

 both in climatic and geological conditions, implying a considerable 

 interval of time. 



It is a commonplace of Archaeology that the culture of the Neolithic 

 peoples throughout a large part of Central, Northern, and Western 

 Europe — like the newly domesticated species possessed by them — is 

 Eurasiatic in type. So, too, in Southern Greece and the iEgean 

 World we meet with a form of Neolithic culture which must be essen- 

 tially regarded as a prolongation of that of Asia Minor. 



' Early Man in Urllnin, 1880, p. 233 seqq. 



