io6 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



skill, were other features. Finds of the so-called Upper Palseolithic series 

 of tools are again characteristic of much of Africa, the north and the east 

 at any rate, of south-western Asia and central and south-western Europe. 

 Within this area the Aurignacian variety of this culture bears character- 

 istic marks over wide areas. It is definitely associated in Africa and 

 Europe with Homo sapiens and there is a considerable range of form 

 among the skeletons found, suggesting that Homo sapiens already had a 

 long history. 



It is at any rate possible that the makers of the earlier Pleistocene tools 

 (Chellean and Acheulean) belonged to Homo sapiens. If so, they seem to 

 have flourished in Africa during early phases of the European Ice Age 

 (probably the Mindel phase of Penck), and to have spread into Europe 

 when aridity ensued in the next interglacial phase (probably the phase 

 which included the formation of the Hotting breccia which is allocated to 

 the Mindel-Riss interval by many students but by some to the Riss- 

 Wiirm). A set-back was followed by a new and much more capable 

 advance, that of the Aurignacian-Capsian hunters. 



In the interval, however, another culture-spread occurred. Utilisers 

 of flint flakes have left their traces in early and middle Pleistocene layers 

 in various parts of Eurasia, and the developed form of the culture has been 

 called Mousterian. In China, Palestine and Europe it is associated with 

 beings who do not belong to Homo sapiens, but we do not yet know what 

 type or types of men were associated with it in North or East Africa, and 

 it is quite possible that there its ideas were taken up in varying degrees in 

 different parts by Homo sapiens who had already used flakes a good deal. 

 This is an archaeological rather than a geographical question, but the 

 possibility is relevant to our present purpose. For, beyond the area of 

 the Capsian-Aurignacian cultures, to the south and south-east especially, 

 there is evidence of spread of a hunting culture that seems best described, 

 provisionally, as based on a mixture of Mousterian and Aurignacian ideas. 

 The tools in question are known from South Africa, as well as from India, 

 and they linger on in use as the basis of Australian culture, as Sollas long 

 ago pointed out, though there they are affected by fragments of later 

 cultures. The importance of what is now the African-Arabian arid zone 

 in the days when hunters were the most advanced social types is under- 

 stood if we reflect on the importance of the ungulate herds, especially 

 Antelopidas, on African grasslands, and if we realise that, during glacial 

 conditions in Europe, North Africa and Arabia would get considerably 

 more winter rainfall, though parts of the eastern Sahara, for example, may 

 well have been arid throughout. Long after the spread of the Aurig- 

 nacian-Capsian hunters, who reached Europe via Spain across the Straits 

 of Gibraltar during an ice retreat, there occurred a third dispersal indicated 

 by finds of implements of flint and chert as before, but many of these are 

 very small and are called pygmy flints. Men were spreading more widely 

 over Europe and Asia, probably because the ice sheets had retreated. It 

 is quite likely that there was no first-class advance of civilisation at this 

 stage but rather a driving force behind, namely, the intensification of the 

 desert in northern Africa and south-western Asia. 



With the next great movement we meet agriculture, so we must pause 



