MOUSTERIAN PERIOD 
107 
sufficiently long to cover a period which saw a wide 
variety of climatic changes in England. We have no 
reason to suppose such changes occurred more rapidly 
then than they do now. We see, too, that at the begin- 
ning of the period the Thames had excavated its valley 
to almost its present level, and then subsidence of the land 
set in, and the valley was filled up at least to the height 
of the Crayford brick earths — 60 feet above the present 
level. The 50-foot terraces on both sides of the river 
are all that remains of the great bed of deposits laid down 
in the valley during the time the men of England were 
in that stage of culture called Mousterian. 
The south side of the Thames valley is not the only 
place where old Mousterian work - floors have been 
found. In drawing up a list of the deposits of the 
Thames valley, arranged in their order of formation, 
Messrs Hinton and Kennard ^ mention the discovery 
of Mousterian floors on the north bank of the Thames — 
at Grays, almost opposite Crayford, at Stoke Newington, 
over which northern London has Extended, and at Acton, 
to the west of London. No true cave-habitation of this 
date has been found in England, but near Mildenhall, 
in the county of Suffblk, East Anglia, Dr Allen Sturge 
found a Mousterian work-station or floor.^ The brick 
earth, fully 30 feet in depth, in which the flints were 
found by Dr Sturge, is situated on the side of a low hill 
which rises on the eastern side of the valley of the Lark — 
a tributary stream of the Great Ouse. The Mildenhall 
brick earths are of the same geological age as those at 
Crayford. Further, as Dr Allen Sturge discovered, 
they have been overwhelmed by a glacial movement, just 
as the brick earths at Crayford were covered over by 
" drift." 
Thus we have the most ample evidence that England 
was inhabited by men of the Mousterian culture ; but so 
far not a trace of his actual body has been found. That 
' "The Relative Ages of the Stone Implements of the Lower Thames 
Valley," Proc. Geol. Assoc, 1905, vol. xix. p. 76. 
'■^ See Proc. Prehistoric Society, East Anglia, 191 1, vol. i. p. 69. 
