32 Prehistoric Races. 



30. Among the theories devised to account for this 

 Glacial c °ld period or glacial age, as to which it 



Eporh. is still dubious whether there was only 



one such spell, or more than one, the latest hypo- 

 thesis, that of an Italian philosopher, connects 

 it with the deluge, a phenomenon reported to 

 us with the most exact documentary evidence. 

 According to this theory, the glacial period coin- 

 cided with the flood, in the sense that the reign of 

 ice was brought on by the causes which operated 

 during or after the deluge. So that the deluge 

 would have to be conceived as an event, which, 

 either before or after or concomitantly, involved a 

 revolution in all parts of the globe. And the part 

 which we know of so well, as described by eye-wit- 

 nesses in the Mosaic narrative, would then be 

 merely one phase, one scene in a tragedy very 

 great, one episode in a terrible drama that involved 

 the whole of our orb. How the palaeolithic man 

 dipped into the glacial age in Europe, we do not 

 see distinctly stated; whether it was that, after the 

 deluge, roaming far away from the cradle-lands of 

 the family, he found himself in places suffering 

 from this Arctic cold, and he became hopelessly 

 ice-bound there; or that, according to another 

 most recent speculation, the value of which is not 

 yet determined, the flood of overflowing waters did 

 not actually reach all parts of the earth; and he, 

 in his own home, was enveloped in some of its mar- 

 ginal phenomena, among which was this intense 



