78 W. Shone — Post- Glacial Man in Britain. 



VI. — Post-Glacial Man in Britain. 

 By William Shone, F.G.S. 



THE relative position of post-Glacial Man to post-Glacial geology 

 has been a rather neglected field of research. This borderland 

 between the domains of the Archgeologist and the Geologist appears 

 to have been treated as neutral ground, yet entombed in it are the 

 relics of Neolithic Man and the first evidences of the dawn of 

 civilization. It may be alleged that the splendid results of cave 

 exploration have given us a better idea of man's evolution from a 

 savage to a civilized existence than could have been obtained from 

 any other source. Whilst this must be admitted, cave research can 

 furnish very little evidence of the great physical changes which 

 went on outside such abodes. If for instance man can be proved to 

 have been an inhabitant of Western Europe during the Glacial 

 epoch, the gradual change of the climate from frigid to temperate 

 may have had a powerful influence in modifying his habits and 

 thereby assisting his development from the state of a rude savage to 

 that of a civilized man. Deposits in caverns aid very little in this 

 work. They are for the most part choked-up subterranean water- 

 courses, and it follows that any deposits found therein may have 

 been subjected to much disturbance. The most slender evidence 

 derived from cave deposits is even by such distinguished geologists 

 as Prof Hughes and Prof. Boyd-Dawkins thought quite sufficient to 

 determine the momentous question whether Palaeolithic Man was 

 Glacial or post-Glacial. Prof. Boyd-Dawkins decides the matter 

 in his "Early Man in Britain," p. 192, in the following very 

 summary manner : — 



" Palgeolithic man has left no traces of his presence in the caves of 

 Castleton and Matlock. They have, however, been met with in 

 several cavei-ns in Wales, such as those of Pembrokeshire and 

 Monmouthshire in the south, and in that of Pont Newydd, near 

 St. Asaph, in North Wales. In the latter a human molar tooth has 

 been found, as well as a "^'quartzite implement and rude splinters 

 and chips of quartzite, of the same type as those of the red sand and 

 in the caves of Cresswell. The pebbles of which these are made 

 have been obtained from the Glacial deposits in the neighbourhood. 

 We may therefore conclude with Professor Hughes, that the 

 Palfeolithic hunter was here after the district was forsaken by the 

 glaciers and the sea, or in other words, in post-Glacial times, as in 

 the parallel case offered by the river-deposits of Bedford and Hoxne. 

 It must also be remarked that the leptorhine Ehinoceros and the 

 Hippopotamus, as well as the straight-tusked Elephant [E. antiqmis), 

 Bear, Bison, Reindeer and Horse, are found with the quartzite 

 implements in the Pont Newydd cave, which may therefore be 

 classified with those of Yorkshire and the lower strata in Mother 

 Grundy's Parlour." 



Mr. Morton, F.G.S. (Geology of the Country around Liverpool, 

 second edition, pp. 188, 189) makes the following comments upon 

 the passage : " Professor Boyd-Dawkins, E.K.S., objects to the Pont 



