The section, Fig. 38, is further remarkable, for the remains found in it are proof that man was a contemporary of the hippopotamus and the straight-tusked elephant, as well as of the urus and the reindeer, in the valley of the Ouse.
General Conclusions as to the River-drift Man.
From the facts recorded in the preceding pages the reader will be able to gather that the River-drift man hunted the reindeer, and the other arctic animals, in southern England and in France, and that he was a contemporary of the African elephant in Spain, and possibly of the pigmy hippopotamus in Greece. It is also clear that he followed the chase over the Mediterranean area, where the only obstacles to his passage from Spain to Africa, from Calabria to Sicily, Malta, and Africa, or from the Peloponnese to Palestine, would be offered by the rivers and morasses (see Map, Fig. 24). It is impossible to doubt but that he wandered either from Palestine to India or India to Palestine. His implements throughout this wide region prove him to have been in the same low stage of culture, alike in the sombre forests of oak and pine in Britain, and when surrounded by the luxuriant vegetation of the Indian jungle. From this distribution over three continents it may be inferred that man was in this stage of culture for a very long period; for it would have been impossible for this culture to have been
proof that these animals were ever driven away from the lower grounds in the south of England or in France by the development of ice or by the extreme severity of climate. The severity of the winters during the sojourn of Palæolithic man in the valleys of the Somme and the Seine, is, however, as Prestwich has pointed out, proved by the large blocks of stone brought down by the ice and embedded in the gravel.
