Pleistocene deposits has greatly increased, and implements and other
relics of palæolithic man have been recorded from many new localities
throughout Europe. But none of this fresh evidence contradicts the
conclusions I had previously arrived at; on the contrary, it has
greatly strengthened my general argument.
Professor Penck was, I think, the first on the Continent to adopt the
views referred to. He was among the earliest to recognise the evidence
of interglacial conditions in the drift-covered regions of northern
Germany, and it was the reflections which those remarkable interglacial
beds were so well calculated to suggest that led him into the same path
as myself. Dr. Penck has published a map[AU] showing the areas covered
by the earlier and later glacial deposits in northern Europe and the
Alpine Lands, and indicating at the same time the various localities
where palæolithic finds have occurred, and in not a single case do any
of the latter appear within the areas covered by the accumulations of
the last glacial epoch.
[AU] _Archiv für Anthropologie_, Bd. xv. Heft 3, 1884.
A glance at the papers which have been published in Germany within
the last few years will show how greatly students of the Pleistocene
ossiferous beds have been influenced by what is now known of
the interglacial deposits and their organic remains. Professors
Rothpletz[AV] and Andreæ,[AW] Dr. Pohlig[AX] and others, do not
now hesitate to correlate with those beds the old ossiferous and
implement-bearing alluvia which lie altogether outside of glaciated
regions.
[AV] Rothpletz: _Denkschrift d. schweizer. Ges. für d. gesammt. Nat._,
Bd. xxviii. 1881.
[AW] Andreæ: _Abhandl. z. geolog. Specialkarte v. Elsass-Lothringen_,
Bd. iv. Heft 2, 1884.
[AX] Pohlig: _op. cit._
The relation of the Pleistocene alluvia of France to the glacial
deposits of that and other countries has been especially canvassed.
Rothpletz, in the paper I have cited, includes these alluvia amongst
the interglacial deposits, and in the present year (1889) we have an
interesting essay on the same subject by the accomplished secretary of
the Anthropological and Archæological Congress which met recently in
Paris. M. Boule[AY] correlates the palæolithic cave- and river-deposits
of France with those of other countries, and shows that they must be
of interglacial age. His classification, I am gratified to find, does
not materially differ from that given by myself a number of years ago.
He is satisfied that in France there is evidence of three glacial
epochs and two well-marked interglacial horizons. The oldest of the
palæolithic stages of Mortillet (Chelléenne) culminated according
to Boule during the last interglacial epoch, while the more recent
palæolithic stages (Moustérienne, Solutréenne, and Magdalénienne)
coincided with the last great development of glacier-ice. The
Palæolithic age, so far as Europe is concerned, came to a close during
this last cold phase of the Glacial period.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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