The Mesolithic Settlement of Northern Europe

Abstract

THE passing of the last Ice Age left northern Europe open to human settlement; but the environment which the settlers encountered was still slowly changing. They had to adjust their equipment to land movements (including the opening of the Channel and the submergence of the Dogger Bank), to the change from a cold Tre-Borear to a warm continental ‘Boreal’ climate and then to a moister ‘Atlantic’ phase, to spread of forests, first of birch and willow, then of pine, then of mixed oak woods, and to consequent alterations in the country's fauna. Of these changes and of the geological, botanical and zoological evidence from which they are reconstructed, Dr. Clark gives a cfear account, illustrated with maps and documented with copious references. The successive phases provide not only the background as adjustments to which human cultures must be interpreted, but also the chronological framework in which they must be arranged. Indeed, accepting at least the method of de Geer's geochronology, Clark provisionally offers absolute dates for the climatic phases: 6800-5000 B.C. for the Boreal, 5000-2500 for the Atlantic.

The Mesolithic Settlement of Northern Europe:

a Study of the Food-Gathering Peoples of Northern Europe during the Early Post-Glacial Period. By Dr. J. G. D. Clark. Pp. xvi + 284 + 8 plates. (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1936.) 25s. net.