Page:Palæolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe.djvu/140

86 two faunas, the lower denoting a warm climate, and the upper a cold climate, has been observed in several instances in Central and Western Europe." His concluding remarks are:—

"Les géologues enclins à multiplier les périodes glaciaires et désireux de trouver dans les données paléontologiques des arguments en faveur de leurs conceptions d'ordre purement physique, penseront peut-être que la faune chaude des foyers inférieurs de la Grotte du Prince n'est pas contemporaine de celle de Chelles mais qu'elle correspond à un retour de cette faune pendant une époque interglaciaire plus récente. Je ferai remarquer, dans ce cas, qu'aucun fait ne vient à l'appui d'une telle hypothèse; qu'une pareille alternance n'a jamais été constatée dans des couches en superposition." (Congrès International, 1906, p. 70.)

The different opinions thus disclosed involve an irreconcilable problem in the development of human culture. If the Chelléen implements are pre-glacial, while their facsimiles in England are post-glacial in the sense of being posterior to the boulder clay, it would follow that the coup-de-poing was a stereotyped implement of humanity during the larger portion of the glacial epoch. Had flint implements similar to those of the river gravels been found in the Cromer Forest bed, we might accept the Chelléen flint industry as pre-glacial; but as matters stand I hold that the river deposits, both at Chelles and at the different stations of the Somme Valley, belong to the middle Pleistocene period, and are to be paralleled with those of the drift-gravels of the Thames and its collateral valleys in the south of England. To understand M. Boule's position in this matter it must be borne in mind that, according to his system of classification, the station of Chelles is placed in the middle Quaternary epoch, posterior to two and anterior to one glacial extension.

The discoveries of Mr Worthington G. Smith (Man, the Primeval Savage of inhabited sites during the Palæolithic period, at Caddington, Stoke Newington, etc., go far to support this view. All the "floors" were not only within the interglacial period, but the manufactured implements show progressive stages in workmanship from the coup-de-poing down to late Moustérien types. Similar evidence is supplied by another Palæolithic floor, explored by Mr F. C. J. Spurrell at Crayford, which has the exceptional feature of showing the actual flakes that were struck off in trimming flint nodules into shape. In