3 3 8 PREHISTORIC E UR OPE. 



sufficient to unite the two continents would join Corsica and 

 Sardinia and Malta to the mainland. If the movement of eleva- 

 tion were continued east as far as the Archipelago it would also 

 effect very considerable modifications in that quarter, uniting 

 many of the small islands to themselves and the adjacent shores 

 of Greece and Asia Minor. It is quite possible, indeed, that the 

 old shore-line of the Mediterranean may now he submerged to a 

 considerably greater depth than 1200 feet, and that the area of 

 land may have been more extensive during some interglacial 

 epochs than would now be brought about by an uniform eleva- 

 tion just sufficient to connect the continents of Europe and 

 Africa by the two land-passages referred to. There are no good 

 grounds, however, for supposing that this was the case. All that 

 we can be quite certain of is simply this, that one or more land- 

 connections formerly existed. A tooth of the pigmy hippopota- 

 mus has been discovered in Crete, from which Professor Boyd 

 Dawkins has inferred that this island joined on to the Pelopon- 

 nese, where remains of the same animal have been found. And 

 as the depth of the intervening sea is "400 to 500 fathoms," 1 he 

 concludes that the whole Mediterranean area has subsided some 

 3000 feet since the Palaeolithic Period ; or, in other words, that 

 Southern Europe and the opposite coasts of Africa stood, during 

 the Old Stone Age, 3000 feet or so higher than they do now. 

 But we are not entitled to assume that the subsidence has been 

 uniform over the whole basin of the Mediterranean. On the 

 contrary, there are many considerations that would lead us to an 

 opposite conclusion. It may quite well be that the greater 

 depth between Greece and Crete is simply due to that region 

 having been more deeply submerged than the areas farther 

 to the west; for the configuration of the sea -bottom in the 

 Archipelago and the neighbourhood of Crete is indicative of very 

 considerable local depressions — the result, doubtless, of those 



1 Cave-hunting, p. 382. According to the charts a considerably less degree of 

 elevation than 500 fathoms would unite Greece to Crete ; and the connection of 

 that island with the mainland need not have been direct by way of Cerigotto 

 and Cerigo. See Geological Magazine, vol. x. p. 49. 



