Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/143

Rh know whether he did so under his original name or not; further research on the subject might well produce additional, and interesting, evidence.

account of palaeolithic man, long demanded by the reading public, has now been provided by Professor Sollas, and the fine series of diagrams and drawings of skulls, sites, implements, animals, and examples of prehistoric art add greatly to its value. Its distinguishing feature is the elaborate attempt to identify the now extinct Tasmanian race with the Chelleans; the Australian natives with the Mousterians; the Bushmen of South Africa with the Aurignacians; and the Eskimo with the Magdaleneans. Though these identifications are supported by a large mass of evidence, the student may feel inclined to suspect that the influence of environment has been to some extent obscured by a too rigid insistence on resemblance of material culture. Professor Sollas also, in a tentative way, proposes a chronology of the prehistoric period which will not satisfy the most extreme thinkers of the two rival schools. While some writers claim for the Neolithic period alone an existence of some 100,000 years. Professor Sollas suggests that about 17,000 years may have passed since the close of the last glacial epoch, and he would place the Magdalenean period some 12,000 years ago. Whatever view may be taken of these racial equations and estimates of time limits, the book, with its easy, graphic style and mastery of a wide literature, must commend itself to all readers.