It must not, of
course, be supposed that this stage of human culture only began
with the invasion of Europe. Men would bring their rough art of
fashioning implements with them, but the southern regions are too
little explored to inform us of the earlier stage. But as man
enters Europe he begins to drop his flints on a soil that we have
constant occasion to probe--although the floor on which he trod
is now sometimes forty or fifty feet below the surface--and we
obtain a surer glimpse of the fortunes of our race.
Most European geologists count four distinct extensions of the
ice-sheet, with three interglacial periods. It is now generally
believed that man came north in the third interglacial period;
though some high authorities think that he came in the second. As
far as England is concerned, it has been determined, under the
auspices of the British Association, that our oldest implements
(apart from the Eoliths) are later than the great ice-sheet, but
there is some evidence that they precede the last extension of
the ice.
Two stages are distinguished in this first part of the
Palaeolithic Age--the Acheulean and Chellean--but it will suffice
for our purpose to take the two together as the earlier and
longer section of the Old Stone Age.
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