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122
PREHISTORIC BRITAIN

the truncated end. It was discovered in 1877, resting on the skull of a Balænoptera whale, in the course of drainage operations on the estate of Meiklewood, a few miles west of Stirling, and when exposed there was a portion of a wooden handle still in the hole. Shell-heaps have been noted along the ancient but now vanished shores of this valley.
Fig. 25.—Perforated implement of stag-horn found associated with the skeleton of a whale in the Casse of Stirling. (11 inches in length.)

But here a new problem crops up. We have already seen that Palæolithic races inhabited the south of England up to the Magdalénien epoch, but apparently there is no evidence to show that their descendants continued to live in these regions up to early Neolithic times. No stranded whales associated with deer-horn axes, no shell-middens, or raised beaches with Azilian harpoons, such as we have described in Scotland, are to be found in South Britain. As a solution of this problem I have elsewhere advanced the hypothesis (Arch. Journal, Vol. LV, pp. 259–85) that nearly all the evidence on this point is now