Publication Date:
1932-05-01
Description:
HUMAN artifacts can often be very useful to the geologist. When they occur in sufficient numbers and are characteristic, prehistorians can be definite in assigning the industries to a certain culture or cultures, and they can then be utilized by the geologist in the same way as are fossils. In Europe during a part of Quaternary times Lower Palaeolithic cultures flourished. Now Quaternary times in Europe can, of course, be readily subdivided into glacial and interglacial periods, but these naturally did not occur further south. In East Africa geological evidence has been adduced to show that intense pluvial periods took the place of our European glaciations, while during the interglacial phases the African areas suffered from arid conditions. Lower Palaeolithic industries are found at certain levels in East Africa and they enable the geologist to correlate the East African and European sequences. South-East India (Madras) is also not an area where glaciations ever occurred: but, we ask, can geological evidence be adduced to demonstrate climatic changes corresponding to those found to have occurred in East Africa ? Lower Palaeolithic industries occur in great numbers in South-East India; whereas most of them have been merely collected from the surface, and are therefore useless for the purposes of exact dating, a number of finds in situ in definite layers have been made, and as in East Africa these can be used as datum lines for correlating purposes.
Print ISSN:
0016-7568
Electronic ISSN:
1469-5081
Topics:
Geosciences
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