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Our science cannot foretell whether all traces of the Great Ice Age are to disappear, and the earth is to enjoy again the genial climate of the Tertiary, or whether the present is an interglacial epoch and the northern lands are comparatively soon again to be wrapped in ice.
In interglacial times of milder climate the arctic fauna-flora retreated, and their places were taken by plants and animals from the south. Peccaries, now found in Texas, ranged into Michigan and New York, while great sloths from South America reached the middle states.
It is pretty clear that the earliest drinking vessels used in Europe were neither bowls of earthenware nor shells of fruits, for the cold climate of interglacial times did not permit the growth in northern latitudes of such large natural vessels as gourds, calabashes, bamboos, or coco-nuts.
The elaborate and minute investigation of the glacial deposits has made it highly probable that there were two glacial eras, two periods in which the ice pushed down far to the south, and that these were separated by a period in which the ice retreated and an age of warmer weather intervened. This is known as the interglacial period.
Plant Migration and Interglacial Periods. Among the leading propositions laid down by Arthur Renfrey, Esq., F.R.S. etc., etc., in the able article prepared by him for "The Physical Atlas of Natural Phenomena," by Alexander Keith Johnston, Edinburg Edition, 1856, on "The Geographical Distribution of the most Important Plants Yielding Food," are the following:
For hundreds of thousands of years Europe and North America, with their alternating glacial and interglacial periods, witnessed extraordinary changes and minglings of their animal population. At one time the reindeer, the mammoth, and the glutton penetrate down to the Mediterranean, in the next phase the elephant and hippopotamus again advance nearly to Central Europe.
On the withdrawal of the ice the streams were compelled to find their way, as best they could, over a fresh land surface, where we now find them flowing on the drift in young, narrow channels. But hundreds of feet below the ground the well driller and the prospector for coal and oil discover deep, wide, buried valleys cut in rock, the channels of preglacial and interglacial streams.
"Climate and Evolution," N. Y. Acad. Sci., 1915. During the glacial epochs the interior of Asia was well watered and full of game which supplied the primitive human hunters. With the advent of each interglacial epoch the rains diminished, grass and trees disappeared, and the desert spread over enormous tracts. Both men and animals must have been driven to sore straits for lack of food.
So far as can be positively ascertained, all the authentic relics of man belong to the Glacial Age. They seem first to become numerous in the interglacial period, and continue to increase and become diversified as we descend lower in time. How long ago it was that the sea of ice began its downflow over the earth it is impossible to say.
The remains of Pleistocene man are naturally found either in caverns, where they escaped destruction by the ice sheets, or in deposits outside the glaciated area. In both cases it is extremely difficult, or quite impossible, to assign the remains to definite glacial or interglacial times. Their relative age is best told by the fauna with which they are associated.
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