d or displaced. If we could accept
the view that it was the Eskimo-like race of the Palaeolithic that
cultivated this art, and that they retreated north with the reindeer
and the ice, and survive in our Eskimo, we should have a plausible
explanation. In point of fact, we find no trace whatever of this slow
migration from the south of Europe to the north. The more probable
supposition is that a new race, with more finished stone implements,
entered Europe, imposed its culture upon the older race, and gradually
exterminated or replaced it. We may leave it open whether a part of the
old race retreated to the north, and became the Eskimo.

Whence came the new race and its culture? It will be seen on reflection
that we have so far been studying the evolution of man in Europe only,
because there alone are his remains known with any fullness. But the
important region which stretches from Morocco to Persia must have been
an equally, if not more, important theatre of development. While Europe
was shivering in the last stage of the Ice-Age, and the mammoth and
reindeer browsed in the snows down to the south of France, this
region would enjoy an excellent climate and a productive soil. We may
confidently assume that there was a large and stirring population of
human beings on it during the Magdalenian cold. We may, with many of the
authorities, look to this temperate and fertile region for the slight
advance made by early Neolithic man beyond his predecessor. As the cold
relaxed, and the southern fringe of dreary steppe w as converted once
more into genial country, the race would push north. There is evidence
that there were still land bridges across the Mediterranean. From Spain
and the south of France this early Neolithic race rapidly spread over
Europe.

It must not be supposed that the New Stone Age at first goes much beyond
the Old in culture. Works on prehistoric man are apt to give as features
of "Neolithic man" all that we know him to have done or discovered
during the whole of the New Stone Age. We read that he not only gave a
finer finish to, and sometimes polished, his stone weapons, but built
houses, put imposing monuments over his dead, and had agriculture, tame
cattle, pottery, and weaving. This is misleading, as the more advanced
of these accomplishments appear only late in the New Stone Age. The
only difference we find at first is that the stone axes, etc., are more
finely chipped or flaked, and are frequently pol