Sir John Evans' Presidential Address. 463 



At the close of the period during which the valleys were being 

 eroded came that represented by the latest occupation of the caves 

 by PaliBolithic man, when, both in Britain and in the south of 

 France, the reindeer was abundant ; but, among the stone weapons 

 and implements of that long troglodytic phase of man's history, not 

 a single example with the edge sharpened by grinding had as yet 

 been found. All that could safely be said was that the larger 

 implements, as well as the larger mammals, had become scarcer, 

 that greater power in chipping flint had been attained, that the arts 

 of the engraver and the sculptor had considerably developed, and 

 that the use of the bow had probably been discovered. 



Directly they encountered the relics of the Neolithic Period, often, 

 in the case of the caves lately mentioned, separated from the earlier 

 remains by a thick layer of underlying stalagmite, they found flint 

 hatchets polished at the edge and on the surface, cutting at the 

 broad and not at the narrow end, and other forms of implements 

 associated with a fauna in all essential respects identical with that 

 of the present day. 



So far as he knew we had as yet no trustworthy evidence of any 

 transition from the one age to the other, and the gulf between them 

 remained practically unbridged. We could, indeed, hardly name 

 the part of the world in which to seek the cradle of Neolithic 

 civilization, though we know that traces of what appeared to have 

 been a stone-using people had been discovered in Egypt, and that 

 what must be among the latest of the relics of their industry had 

 been assigned to a date some 3,500 to 4,000 years before our era. 

 The men of that time had attained to the highest degree of skill in 

 working flint that had ever been reached. Their beautifully-made 

 knives and spear-heads seemed indicative of a culminating point 

 reached after long ages of experience ; but whence these artists in 

 flint came or who they were was at present absolutely unknown, 

 and their handiworks afforded no clue to help us in tracing their 

 origin. 



Taking a wider survey, we might say that, generally speaking, 

 not only the fauna but the surface configuration of the country were, 

 in Western Europe at all events, much the same at the commence- 

 ment of the Neolithic Period as they are at the present day. We 

 had. too, no geological indications to aid us in forming any chrono- 

 logical scale. 



But, pending the advent of evidence to the contrary, we might 

 provisionally adopt the view that owing to failure of food, climatal 

 changes, or other causes, the occupation of Western Europe by 

 Paleolithic man absolutely ceased, and that it was not until after 

 an interval of long duration that Europe was repeopled by a race 

 of men immigrating from some other part of the globe where the 

 human race had survived, and in course of ages had developed 

 a higher stage of culture than that of the Palaeolithic man. 



