Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/199

the north, the valley gravels are composed to a considerable extent of débris washed out of the boulder clays, and are therefore later; some of the Palæolithic implements are made of ice-borne quartzites. It may therefore be concluded that man was probably pre-glacial and glacial in Europe, but certainly post-glacial in the area north of the Thames.^[1]

Fig. 39.—Flint Hâche, Hoxne, 1/2.

1. Dr. James Geikie's view (The Great Ice Age) that the Palæolithic river-strata are "interglacial," in the sense of belonging to a warm period intervening between two periods of extreme cold, is unsupported by any evidence except that of Brandon and the neighbourhood now under discussion. If that be allowed to pass unchallenged, it does not follow that the river strata containing similar remains in southern England and France are also "interglacial." It is probable that glaciers descended from the mountains of Scotland and of all the higher hills of Great Britain, then lifted up at least 600 feet above their present levels into the colder regions of the air, as well as from the Alps, Pyrenees, and hilly region of Auvergne, while the mammalia were living in the forests and prairies below; but there is no