THE TUNDRAS AND STEPPES OF PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 335 



the breccia bed, in a word, marks the transition from steppe to forest 

 conditions. Obviously the climate was gradually improving, the forests 

 continuing to increase at the expense of the earlier steppe flora. 



In the gray relic bed that succeeds we lose all trace of the character- 

 istic steppe fauna. The most abundant remains are those of red deer, 

 roe deer, horse, and ox, and with these are associated relics of a number 

 of other forms, such as badger, wild-cat, hare, urus, goat, and sheep. 

 The steppe fauna had now obviously become replaced by a forest fauna. 

 Paleolithic man — the reindeer hunter of the tundras and steppes — had 

 also vanished, and his Neolithic successor now occupied the rock shelter 

 of the , Schweizersbild. The gray relic bed and the overlying humus 

 bed tell a most interesting tale, but into that I can not go. It is suffi- 

 cient to note that the old reindeer hunters seem to have departed before 

 forest conditions had been fully established. We may surmise that as 

 the climate became warmer the reindeer gradually withdrew from the 

 Alpine Vorland. Probably it had already become somewhat scarce 

 during the accumulation of the breccia bed, in which, as will be remem- 

 bered, traces and remains of it and its hunters become less and less 

 common. One can hardly doubt that the emigration of the reindeer 

 and the final exodus of Paleolithic man from north Switzerland were 

 contemporaneous events, brought about by changing climatic condi- 

 tions. We can picture to ourselves the old race of hunters, with the 

 contemporaneous steppe fauna, gradually passing east and northeast, 

 while the forests continued to encroach upon and overspread the fertile 

 lands of central Europe. It is possible that Neolithic man may here 

 and there have come into contact with his Paleolithic predecessor, but 

 of this we have no evidence. All we certainly know is that the latter 

 vanished from central Europe with the steppe fauna, and that when 

 Neolithic man made his earliest appearance a forest fauna was in pos- 

 session of the land. 



II. 1 



In my preceding lecture evidence was adduced to show that tundras 

 and steppes, with their characteristic faunas, formerly existed in cen- 

 tral and west central Europe. We saw that for a long time the 

 climatic conditions of these regions must have resembled those that 

 now obtain in northern Siberia and the barren grounds of North 

 America, where mosses and lichens form the prevailing growths, and 

 arctic lemmings, hares, and foxes, the reindeer, and the musk ox are 

 the common indigenous animals. All these characteristic species 

 formerly lived in middle Europe. Eventually our tundra flora and 

 fauna gradually disappeared and were as gradually replaced by steppe 

 forms of life. Jerboas, pouched marmots, pika, and many others — 

 such an assemblage as we now see in the subarctic steppes of southeast 

 Eussia and southwest Siberia — flourished throughout the regions over 



'A lecture delivered before the Royal Dublin Society, March 11, X898. 



