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 EARLY MAN implements from neighbouring gravels such as these. They prove beyond any doubt that there were several — probably many — different periods of human occupation in the ' drift ' age, separated from one another by periods of vast diluvial action. The earth v^ras swept clean of its implements by one great set of floods ; then man reappeared, and his implements in turn were swept down into gravels, and so on. How many times this process was repeated it is impossible to say ; but as it is difficult to believe that each recurrence of habitable conditions with the alternating flood conditions was other than of very long duration, the total length of time thus adumbrated for the whole ' drift ' period must have been immense — far beyond anything that has hitherto been tentatively assigned to it. We are now in a position to sum up the knowledge gained from this discussion of the geological conditions of the ridge. 1. The first and most important point is the evidence just brought forward that the whole ' drift ' period was made up of sub-periods during which the land was alternately habitable and under diluvial conditions. 2. That the ' drift ' period must have been of sufficient length to include not only the vast deposits of the Thames Valley, but also large and important deposits in Suffolk which are not represented in the Thames Valley. 3. That the patina of ' drift ' implements, certainly in Suffolk and probably everywhere else, was formed before they got into their present positions in the gravels. There is every reason to believe that this formation of patina on flints of good quality is of very slow growth ; for no neolithic implement has ever been found presenting anything like the ochreous patination so distinctive of a large proportion of ' drift ' implements. Yet even at the most moderate computation neolithic implements are several thousands of years old. 4. This being so, the very varied and in many cases the very deep patination of many of the Warren Hill ovates points to the period represented by them as having been very long, probably greatly exceeding anything that we can allow for the whole Neolithic Age, including the time that has elapsed since it came to an end. Yet this Warren Hill period is merely one of many sub-periods of the great ' drift ' age. We begin here to get a glimpse of the vast extension of palaeolithic time. 5. Passing on from the lessons taught as to the ' drift ' period we come to the next great division of palaeolithic archaeology, the ' Mousterian.' After the 'drift' age had passed away, and before the Mousterian was established, we saw that a wholly new distribution of geological forces took place by which the valley and the river in it were changed from their original character. The river disappeared, and the land to the west of the valley was shaved down to its present relative level ; the lowering process being carried right up to the western side of our ridge, which then formed a bank sloping down from the higher ground to the east to the newly excavated lower ground to the west. And on this bank, the shore probably of some lagoon, lived ' Mousterian ' man, whose implements are found buried in the brick-earth deposited by the muddy waters of the gradually rising lagoon. This is probably the only instance where we get a glimpse of the order of time that elapsed between the ' drift ' epoch and that of ' Mousterian ' man. Here we have the sequence : ovates of Warren Hill ; their patination ; their accidental chipping and its patination; the flood conditions that washed them into the gravels; recurrence 247