PLEISTOCENE CLASSIFICATIONS.
267
THE TABLE OF COMPARATIVE PLEISTOCENE
CLASSIFICATIONS.
The contractions in the body of this table refer to the fol-
lowing glacial episodes, etc.:—Sicilian, Gunzian, Mindelian,
Rissian, Wurmian, and Neo-Wurmian or Buhlstadium. The
signs indicate :—O Pre-Glacial, = glacial stage (un-named),—
cold stage, X temperate stage, XX Post-Glacial, while the heavy
stars indicate that these deposits are transferred to the Mous-
terian or Magdalenian.
It would require a volume fully to discuss the table, but
the following points may be noted ".—
Solutrian.—This is omitted from the time-scale because
I am satisfied that the cultural evolution (alike in flint-work,
bone-work, and pictorial art) from the end of the Aurignacian
to the beginning of the Magdalenian is continuous and unbroken.
The Solutrians would seem to have been bands of foreign invaders
who settled in France in various localities. The Aurignacian
and Magdalenian culture is essentially the same, so that al-
though the Solutrian culture (which is totally different) wedges
in between them in some districts, it cannot have broken the
continuity between the two. In the Solutrian home in Central
Europe the case would be quite different.
Penck and Bruckner.—Include the minor Buhlstadium
cold, following on the milder oscillation of Achen, within the
larger Wurmian glaciation.
Boule.—Considers the early Gunzian and Mindelian as
the maximum glaciation, the Magdalenian being cold and dry,
but post-glacial.
Marr.—Removes the Chalky Boulder Clay to the Mousterian
ice age, classed as Wurmian on the basis of the Ipswich evidences,
which the writer thinks have been misread.
Dewey.—Groups the Purple Boulder Clay of north-eastern
England with the Magdalenian and Ponders End stage. (Geol.
Mag. 1913, p. 154.) My own inclination tends rather to the view
that the Purple Clay = the Chalky-Kimeridgic Clay, and that it
is more probably the Hessle Clay that corresponds to the
Ponders End stage further south.
Brooks.—In a more recent note in Man (1922, 47) now cor-
relates the Acheulian with the Rissian, the Mousterian with the
Wurmian, and the Chalky Boulder Clay with the Mindelian.
While taking the broadest view, he would make two chief
glaciations only, Gunz + Mindel and Riss + Wurm, with the
Chellian as the only really warm interglacial period between
them. This is getting nearer to my own view than his previous
classification, though if the Riss and Wurm be grouped
together, they must be placed before the Chellian.