By the estimates already given a basis is formed upon which a calculation can be made as to the time when this epoch began. At the time of the most intense cold the eccentricity of the earth's orbit was .0575; the difference in millions of miles between the greatest and least distances of the earth from the sun 10½; the number of days by which winter, occurring in aphelion was longer than the summer in perihelion 27.8; the mean temperature of the hottest summer month in the latitude of London when the summer occurs in perihelion, 113°; the mean temperature of the coldest winter month in the latitude of London when the winter occurs in aphelion, 0° 7'. Sixty thousand years later the eccentricity of the earth's orbit was but .0332; the difference of distance in millions of miles was 6; number of winter days in excess, 16.1; mean of hottest month in latitude of London, 95°, and mean of coldest month 12°. It is evident then at this time (one hundred and fifty thousand years ago) a "great thaw" had taken place and the glaciers driven back, although fifty thousand years later less intense cold set in again. If thirty thousand years be allowed for the "great thaw" from the extreme point of cold, and that extreme point to have been two hundred and ten thousand years ago, then one hundred and eighty thousand years ago the glaciers had become so broken up as to allow vegetation to spring up in many localities, and the wild beasts to partially reassert their dominion. If to this be added the time required for the duration of the glacial epoch (two hundred and twenty-four thousand years) then the time when the ice began to accumulate was four hundred and four thousand years ago. But if the tables of Mr. Croll be correct, their beginning could not have been earlier than three hundred and fifty thousand years ago, as the eccentricity of the earth's orbit varied but little from the present, and five hundred and fifty thousand years ago it was almost identical with that of the present.[11]
During the last stages of this ocean of ice it must have melted very rapidly,[12] for great rivers were formed, and the water pouring down its icy bed sought other streams, and on the bosom of the earth swept away loose sediment, depositing it along the course of rivers and in caves of the earth, covering the remains of man along with those of animals that perished during the long winter of ice.
Fig. 2.
Stream issuing from a Glacier.
Evidences of the Existence of Man.—The traces of man in the deposits made during the glacial epoch are numerous. Out of the many, the most noted will be given, with a view to their chronological order.
In all probability the very oldest implements of the post-tertiary, and consequently the beginning of the glacial epoch, if not of the pliocene, are those found in the south of Hampshire, between Gosport and Southampton. They came from a tabular mass of drift which caps the tertiary strata. "The great bed of gravel resting on eocene tertiary strata, in which these implements have been found, consists in most places of half-rolled or semi-angular chalk flints, mixed with rounded pebbles washed out of the tertiary strata.... Many of them exhibit the same colors and ochreous stain as do the flints in the gravel in which they lay."
West of the Southampton estuary, "on both sides of the opening at Bournemouth, flint tools of the ancient type have been met with in the gravel capping the cliffs. The gravel from which the flint tool was taken at Bournemouth is about one hundred feet above the level of the sea.... The gravel consists in great part of pebbles derived from tertiary strata."
The oval flint implement discovered in gravel at the top of the Foreland cliff "is of the true palæolithic type, and the gravel in which it is imbedded at the height of about eighty feet above the level of the sea, may have once extended to the cliffs near Gosport; in which case we should have to infer that the channel called the Solent had not yet been scooped out when this region was inhabited by palæolithic man."[13]
It may be safely inferred that the implements in the above three enumerations were imbedded at about the same time.