SOME RECENT PALEOLITHIC DISCOVERIES

Abstract

The incoming year will witness the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the appearance of Darwin's Origin of Species. The celebration in this country began with the Darwin Anniversary Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science during convocation week. Every one is familiar with the uplift Darwin's work gave to science as a whole. Not the least among the beneficent results was the impetus given to the study of anthropology, particularly prehistoric archeology. By a singular coincidence the very year (1859) that the Darwinian theory was published, Prestwich visited the valley of the Somme and satisfied himself of the authenticity of Boucher de Perthes's discoveries in the river drift at Abbeville. It is therefore just fifty years since the first general recognition of paleoliths as artifacts. In visiting some new paleolithic stations during the past summer it occurred to me that this might be a fitting time to speak of certain recent developments in the European field. One of the most important paleolithic discoveries in recent years is that made by Herr Emil Baichler, Director of the Natural History Museum in St Gallen, Switzerland. The Alpine region had not been considered seriously as a field for paleolithic research, since the latter period closed before the retreat of the glaciers to anything like their present extent. It is true man might have penetrated into the Alps during an interglacial period, but the evidences of his presence would have been destroyed by the succeeding glaciation. Two stations in Switzerland of the Magdalenian epoch have been known for years, viz., Schweizersbild and Kesslerloch, but these are north of the Rhine in Canton Schaffhausen. It remained for Herr Bachler to make the discovery, somed four years ago, of a station of Mousterian age; not in a valley, or even the foot-hills, but in the Siintis mountains which lie between the lakes of Constance and Ziirich. 634