Man and the Ice Age

Abstract

OF the many discussions which took place during the recent meeting of the British Association at Hull, few are likely, on purely scientific grounds, to prove of more importance than that on the relation of man to the ice age in Britain, in which the sections of geology, geography, and anthropology took part. It cannot be said that any agreement was reached; but the significance of the discussion lies in the fact that protagonists of different schools of thought in geology were brought face to face, while archeologists and geographers were able to formulate and lay before them problems for the solution of which they await the assistance of geologists. In considering the problems of the ice age, geologists and archeologists are dealing with the same material, but each from their special point of view. The result has been a difference in nomenclature and method of classification: the geologist thinks in terms of the deposits; the archeologist in terms of the artefacts found in them. Consequently, as Prof. P. F. Kendall pointed out, any discussion between them is likely to come to a deadlock through disparity of nomenclature. This discussion, however, showed that the difficulty is by no means insuperable.