The Migrations of Pre-Glacial Man

Abstract

THE question raised by “Glaciator” has been treated by me in a paper entitled “The Faunas of the Ffynnon Beuno Caves and of the Norfolk Forest Bed” in the Geological Magazine for March 1887. I there stated that, “Although man probably reached this country from the east, it seems to me equally clear that he must also have arrived here with the reindeer from some northern source during the advance of glacial conditions.” Though the Norfolk Forest Bed fauna contains abundant remains of deer and of other animals suitable as food for man, it is curious that so far no implements or other traces of man have been found there. The Forest Bed contains in the main the fauna of an eastern area, as the river on the banks of which the animals roamed flowed from the south-east. If pre-glacial man arrived in this country from the east or south, we should therefore expect to find evidences of this in the Forest Bed. On the other hand, wherever the remains of northern animals, such as the reindeer, mammoth, and rhinoceros, occur in any abundance, there we almost invariably find traces of man. Now that we know that man arrived in this country before the climax of the Ice age, as proved by the explorations carried on for several years at the Ffynnon Beuno Caves (amply confirmed also by this year's researches), it seems but natural to infer that man arrived in this country with the northern animals as they were compelled to migrate southwards by the gradually advancing glacial conditions, and that he kept mainly with the reindeer near the edge of the advancing ice.