198 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



IX. — Post-glacial Changes and Food Production. 



According to de Geer, sinking of land in North- West Europe contri- 

 buted to rapid retreat of ice sheets aboiit 6000 B.C., and the belt of the 

 Atlantic westerlies shifted northward to its present position. The Central 

 Asiatic ice sheets would thus be diminished through reduction of precipita- 

 tion in consequence of this shift. For some millenia the Central Asiatic 

 ice continued to yield enough water to keep moist certain areas that are 

 now arid. Farther south the Mediterranean region and especially Mesopo- 

 tamia were acquiring their well-known alternation of a cool rainy with a 

 dry warm season. Mesopotamia doubtless long retained a good deal of 

 moisture from melting of mountain-ice, especially as there was occasional 

 slight regrowth of ice, as in the ' Gschnitz ' period of the glaciologists. 

 This, however, was followed by marked subsidence of land in N.W. Europe, 

 giving the mild conditions of the ' Littorina Sea ' in the Baltic area, and 

 presumably considerable heat farther south {e.g. in Mesopotamia). 



The change of climate in N.W. Europe brought pine forest to replace 

 the earlier steppe, and this was a serious crisis for the animal and human 

 inhabitants. A pine forest is generally unfriendly to men who depend 

 on collecting for their own needs, and the old culture seems to have 

 decayed, leaving fragmented groups near the shores living on shell-fish, &c. 

 Some patches free of forest because of loess soil or porous rock seem to 

 have retained a hunting population, but the general condition seems to 

 have been one of poverty and stagnation, though Kossinna thinks the 

 south Baltic shores saw an advance of culture which most other students 

 ascribe to awakening influences from the south-east at a later date. The 

 oak forest succeeded the pine, and might have brought better opportunities 

 had there been indigenous food-plants in W. or N.W. Europe. As it was, 

 however, what may be called epipalseolithic conditions continued for long 

 ages in the west. 



The probable early home of grain was in some part of the Fertile Crescent 

 around the north end of the Arabian Desert, and food production was 

 already undertaken there, e.g. at Susa, about or before 5000 B.C. A 

 culture complex, which included cultivation of wheat and barley, the art 

 of stone-grinding, that gave rise to the wedge and a mastery over work 

 in wood, the hafting of tools, pottery, the beginnings of domestication of 

 animals (possibly mainly for milk), the dawn of metallurgy and other arts, 

 seems to have arisen in the Fertile Crescent ; and the Nile area may have 

 contributed to, as well as been helped by, this. Evidence is as yet frag- 

 mentary, but there are indications of the spread of elements of this culture 

 complex during the fourth millennium B.C. to W. Europe, probably via 

 Hungary.'^" The lake-dwellings of Switzerland seem to be a result of 

 this. A spread of early Danubian culture to Belgium is held by several 

 to have brought agriculture to W. Europe. There is, however, no need 

 to picture the awakening West as copying exactly from old and distant 

 civilisations. One will be nearer the truth if one thinks of the incoming 

 of a germinating influence. The mastery of a wood technique, food 



26 See further discussion in ' The Corridors of Time,' H. J. E. Peake and H. J. 

 Pleure (iu the press) ; also Childe, V. G., ' Dawn of European Civilisation,' 1925 ; 

 Hoemes-Menghin, op. cit. 



