Antarctica and Glacial Ages

Abstract

IN his interesting article on “Antarctica and Glacial Ages” 1, Prof. MacBride states: “If we add the breadth of the ice-shelf to the length of the Beardmore Glacier, we arrive at a total extent of ice-floe of about five hundred miles, and this is considerably longer than any glacier the existence of which we have evidence in the Pleistocene Glacial Age.” But, as is well known, rocks of Scandinavian origin are found in the Pleistocene glacial tills of the north-east coast of Norfolk, and there seems very good reason to believe that these erratics were brought into East Anglia by ice originating in Scandinavia. Thus this Pleistocene ice-flow cannot have been much less than 500 miles long, and may have been considerably more. Again, on p. 98, Prof. MacBride claims—after enumerating the Penckian glaciations, that “The most interesting thing about these periods is that the bones and tools of the oldest indubitably human race are found in the inter-glacial interval between the Wurm and the Reiss periods”. Further, on p. 99, he mentions “the interglacial period between the Reiss and the Wurm glaciations—the time indeed when Neanderthal man flourished”. I imagine that Prof. MacBride is referring to the inter-glacial epoch (whether it is correctly assigned to that of the Reiss-Wurm is another matter) when Late Acheulean man existed, and at the close of which the Neanderthal people lived in Western Europe and made the classic Mousterian implements. Is it to these races and implements that Prof. MacBride would confine the term “indubitably human”?