Fig. 73. Distribution of the principal Pre-Chellean and Chellean industrial stations in western Europe.
In western Europe the Chellean culture certainly had a development all its own, adapted to a race of bold hunters who lived in the open and whose entire industry developed around the products of the chase. For them flint and quartzite took the place of bronze, iron, or steel. This culture marked a distinct and probably a very long epoch of time in which inventions and multiplications of form were gradually spread from tribe to tribe, exactly as modern inventions, usually originating at a single point and often in the mind of one ingenious individual, gradually spread over the world.
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Fig. 74. Section of the middle and high terraces at St. Acheul, from southwest to northeast. After Commont, 1908, 1909, modified and redrawn. The Pre-Chellean workers first established themselves here at the time when the Somme was visited by the straight-tusked elephant and other primitive mammals of the warm African-Asiatic fauna. (Compare Fig. 59, p. 122.)
The clearest examples of the evolution of the seven or eight implements of the Chellean culture from the five or six rudimentary types of the Pre-Chellean have been found at St. Acheul by Commont. The abundance and variety of flint at this great station on the Somme made it a centre of industry from the dawn of the Old Stone Age to its very close. It was probably a region favorable to all kinds of large and small game. The researches of Commont show that with the exception of Castillo in northern Spain no other station in all Europe was so continuously occupied. From Pre-Chellean to Neolithic times the men of every culture stage except the Magdalenian and Azilian-Tardenoisian found their way here, and thus the site of St. Acheul presents an epitome of the entire prehistoric industry. Even during the colder periods of climate this region continued to be visited—possibly during the warm weather of the summer seasons. At Montières, along the Somme, we find deposits of Mousterian culture which is generally characteristic of the cold climatic period but is here associated with a temperate fauna, including the hippopotamus, Merck's rhinoceros, and the straight-tusked elephant. Great geographic and climatic changes took place in the valley of the Somme during this long period of human evolution. The Pre-Chellean workers first established their industry on the middle and high 'terraces' at the time when the Somme was visited by the straight-tusked elephant and other much more primitive mammals of the warm Asiatic fauna. The early Acheulean camps on the same terraces were pitched in the gravels below layers of 'loess' which betoken an entire climatic change. The fourth glaciation passed by, and the Upper Palæolithic flint workers again returned and left the débris of their industry in the layers of loam which swept down the slopes of the valley from the surrounding hills. This succession will be studied more in detail in connection with the industry.
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Fig. 75. Excavation on the 'high terrace' at St. Acheul, known as the ancienne carrière Dupont and more recently as the carrière Bultel, showing eight geologic layers from the Upper Palæolithic deposits of brick-earth at the top(9) down to the sub-Chellean yellow gravels(2) overlying the chalk terrace at the bottom.
As contrasted with the four or more Pre-Chellean stations already known, namely, St. Acheul, Montières, Helin, Gray's Thurrock, and possibly Abbeville and Piltdown, there are at least sixteen stations in western Europe which are characteristically Chellean. In addition to the sites named above, all of which show deposits of typical Chellean implements above the Pre-Chellean, we may note the important Chellean stations of San Isidro and Torralba in central Spain; Tilloux and Marignac in southwestern France; Créteil, Colombes, Bois Colombes, and Billancourt on the Seine, in the immediate vicinity of Paris; Cergy on the Oise; the type station of Chelles on the Marne; Abbeville on the northern bank of the Somme; and the famous station of Kent's Hole, Devon, on the southwestern coast of England. Thus far no typical Chellean station has been discovered in Portugal, Italy, Germany, or Austria, nor, indeed, in any part of central Europe. This leaves the original habitat of the tribes that brought the Chellean culture to western Europe still a mystery; but, as already observed, the location of the stations favors the theory of a migration through northern Africa rather than through eastern Europe.