360 PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 



Are these facts, thus briefly recapitulated, sufficient to prove 

 that Palaeolithic man did not survive the last glacial epoch? 

 Well, they go a long way to do so, and when their evidence is 

 taken in connection with that furnished by the postglacial 

 deposits, the result appears to me to amount to a demonstra- 

 tion that the manufacture and use of Palaeolithic implements 

 came to an end in our continent during the last glacial epoch. 

 This I shall endeavour to make clear in the sequel, meanwhile 

 I may take note of one objection to this view which has been 

 urged by some English geologists. They tell us that Palaeolithic 

 implements occur in certain deposits that overlie the great 

 chalky boulder-clay in Norfolk and other places, and these 

 deposits are recognised by them as of postglacial age, simply 

 from the fact that they rest upon boulder-clay. Now this con- 

 clusion would be inevitable if it were true that the great chalky 

 boulder-clay had been laid down during the last glacial epoch. 

 If that were the case no one could dispute their contention that 

 Palaeolithic man lived in England in postglacial times. And 

 so long as geologists believed that the Glacial Period had been 

 only one long uninterrupted period of cold conditions which 

 came on gradually, reached a climax, and then gradually passed 

 away, the conclusion I refer to was not only natural but one 

 from which there was no possibility of escaping. We know 

 now, however, that during the Glacial Period arctic and genial 

 climates alternated, and that the great chalky boulder-clay is 

 not the moraine profonde of the last glacial epoch, but belongs 

 to a much earlier stage in the series. The occurrence of Palaeo- 

 lithic deposits overlying that boulder-clay is therefore no proof 

 whatever that Palaeolithic man lived in England in postglacial 

 times. In like manner Palaeolithic relics occur at Schussenried 

 in Wiirtemberg in a deposit that clearly overlies glacial detritus. 

 But that morainic material is the product of what the Swiss 

 call their first and greatest glacial epoch — the glaciers of the 

 last cold epoch never flowed so far out upon the low grounds. 

 Thus the superposition of the Schussenried peat and tufa upon 

 morainic material no more proves the postglacial age of these 



