When England Was Really field.

Hokitika Guardian, 16 February 1922, Page 4

When England Was Really field.

SABRE TOOTHED TIGERS AND

ARCTIC OX

LIFE IN 20,000 B.C

How primitive man enjoyed himself and what he did in the ages before history began i s told very simply and clearly by Marjorie and 0. H. B. Quennell in “Everyday Life in the Stone Age” (just published, Batsford, os net). It is a work meant primarily for boys and girls, but it is so good of its kind that it will be enjoyed by most of their elders.

Nothing is more wonderful than the wide and various knowledge of pro-his-toric man which modern archaeology has given in the last few years. Implements made by him have been found dating back 27,000 years and perhaps much mere, in certain gravels on the Somme. In those far-off days—

“The climate was warm, as remains are found of Elephas antiquus, a southern type of elephant which preceded the mammoth. England was connected to Europe by a watershed of dry land where the straits of Dover now arc. There was an isthmus across the Mediterranean at Gibraltar and another south of Sicily. This is the explanation of the hippopotamus in England; he did not need to swim; he walked here.” FIR ST-K N 0 \VN EN GLISHMAN. The first-known Englishman was the l’iltdown man, so called from a part of a skull found at Piltdown, in the Sussex weald, of whom a most unflattering portrait is given— reconstructed from the skull. “The brain capacity is about equal to the smaller human brain of today. The skull is extraordinarily thick. The Piltdown man could and probably did, butt a rival away. lie was probably rigbt-handed. He had no easy existence. One of his foes must have been the sabretoother tiger, a fierce and formidable creature whose bones hae been found in Kent’s Camern and elsewhere in the country. How such antagonists were combated by our remote progenitors is told: “To dig a pit would not have been beyond the wit of prehistoric man obtained the meat that he needed for his food. He was, of course, as carnivorous as hie loe the tiger.” Still later, Borne 22,000 years ago, pre-historic man had developed an art, the recent discovery of which has startled the world in the wonderful coloured drawings of the Altamim cave in Spain. Here were found: “Drawings and paintings of bulls, bison, deer, horses, and many other animals, some life-size. There is no light in the cave and the figures occur over all the walls. They cannot be seen now without a light and a lamp must have been used when they were painted. Many of the animals are drawn with arrows sticking in their bodies; on some the heart is shown in red.”

The appearance of such animals as the Arctic hare and musk-ox in this strange picture gallery shows that the climate about 20,000 8.C., must have been much colder than it iB to-day. But this can he easily explained:

“Scientists toll us that it only wants a fall of about sdeg. centigrade (9deg. Fahrenheit) below the mean annual temperature of Europe to have all the rigour of the glacial periods back again or that a rise of 4to 5 degrees would

cause all the Swiss glaciers to disappear.” Such an alteration might he compassed by that mysterious thing known ) a 8 the Precession of the Equinoxes.