231. The Scandinavian Area as an Example
The most satisfactory region for such a purpose is Scandinavia—the peninsula, Denmark, and the Baltic coasts, including much of northeast Germany. This was a glacier-covered area in the Mousterian, and either obliterated or uninhabited in the Upper Palæolithic. It has therefore no Old Stone Age history. During the Magdalenian, the glaciers had shrunk to cover only most of the Scandinavian peninsula and Finland. Denmark was ice-free. But what is now the Baltic stretched as an open sound from the North Sea across southern Finland and northwestern Russia to the Arctic Ocean. From this ocean as well as the remaining glaciers emanated a low temperature, in which there throve arctic forms of life, especially the small shell Yoldia arctica, which flourishes only where the sea bottom temperature ranges between 1° plus and 2° minus Centigrade. This great, chilly sound of some sixteen to ten thousand years ago is known as the Yoldia Sea. Denmark and the German coast must still have been cold, as the remains of the sub-arctic flora show, and were without human inhabitants.