FIG. 84.—Chellean flint implement,
Saint-Acheul (Somme); half natural size.
(After G. and A. de Mortillet.)
France with Belgium, the south of England, the three southern peninsulas (Iberian, Appenine, and Balkan), the south of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the plains of Southern Russia as far as the Volga, and the basin of the Kama, communicating on the south of the Ural by a narrow isthmus with the Siberian steppes—these were the only countries which quaternary man could occupy. These conditions only changed at the time that the glaciers began to withdraw (first interglacial period). The climate became milder again, and the Arctic flora gave place to the flora of the forests of the Temperate Zone. It is to this period that the most undoubtedly ancient vestiges of mankind in Europe are to be attributed.
MAP 1.—Europe in the first glacial period. Light grey, glaciers;
medium grey, sea; dark grey, land; white points, floating ice.
(After De Geer.)
The men of that period have handed down to us implements of a very rude type: fragments of flint of pointed form, the sinuous edges of which are scarcely trimmed by the removal of some flakes.[341] These implements are called “knuckle-dusters” (G. de Mortillet), or “Chellean axes” (Fig. [84]), from the Chelles bed in the valley of the Seine; but such implements are found in sitû in numerous places—in France (especially in the valley of the Somme), in England (valleys of the Ouse and the Thames), in Spain, Portugal, Austria, Belgium, etc.[342]
The first interglacial period, characterised, as we have just seen, by a mild and moist climate, was followed by a new glacier invasion (second glacial period). This time the sea of ice did not extend as far as in the first period: it covered Ireland, Scotland, the north of England (as far as Yorkshire), Scandinavia, Finland, and stopped in Germany and Russia at a line passing nearly through the present site of Hamburg, Berlin, Warsaw, Vilna, Novgorod, Lake Onega, Archangel.