Page:Palæolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe.djvu/58

28 viewed as the remains of animals living in the district at the time, and deposited by a river current, great with small, as in the case of similar accumulations on the land." (Early Man in Britain, p. 148.)

During the interglacial warm period which followed that of maximum glaciation, or possibly before this, it would appear that the level of the Mediterranean Sea stood so low that land bridges connected Europe with Africa, thus permitting of an extensive immigration of the characteristic fauna of the latter into the former. This view, originally advanced by Dr Falconer and Admiral Spratt, is fully borne out by an examination of the fossil remains of Sicily and Malta. Any combination of physical causes which would exclude the waters of the Atlantic from the Mediterranean basin would, owing to evaporation being in excess of the influx volume of its rivers, convert the latter into two or more inland lakes, so that a large portion of its present bed would be occupied with a subtropical flora and fauna, among which, possibly, man himself found a congenial home—a suggestion which finds support in the fact that the earliest forms of flint implements are found in Algeria and other parts of the African continent. Subsequently, owing to a depression of the Mediterranean area, a junction between the waters of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean was effected through the Straits of Gibraltar, an event which, of course, obliterated the land bridges; the result of this was to effectually bar the return of the African fauna to their original home, when urged southwards by the increasing severity of the climate which culminated in another glacial period, and thus allowed the northern fauna to spread over central Europe. Henceforth both man and beast had to continue the struggle of life under novel and unexpected circumstances, the consequence of which was that these southern animals, such as the African elephant, spotted hyæna, lion, leopard, hippopotamus, etc., became practically extinct in Europe. The changes thus effected in the environment are of exceptional importance, because they are coeval with the history of man in Europe, during which he had to accommodate himself to all the domestic discomforts consequent on the