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THE TUNDRAS AND STEPPES OF PREHISTORIC EUROPE.
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the great ice sheets and glaciers, while the later came into existence when glacial conditions were passing away. The tundra and steppe conditions of our continent belong, in short, to that remarkable cycle of climatic and geographical changes known as the Ice age or glacial period. Paleolithic man undoubtedly lived through both phases, for his relics and remains are found associated alike with the arctic lemmings and the succeeding steppe animals. Whether the reindeer hunter of middle Europe ever came into contact there with the Neolithic man we can not tell. Were we to trust to negative evidence we should say he never did. But negative evidence can not be trusted. It is quite possible that the two races may have met and even commingled, but of this no proof is forthcoming. The strong hiatus that separates the Old Stone and the New Stone epochs in western and northwestern Europe has not yet been bridged over in middle and southern Europe. When last we see Paleolithic man he is hunting the reindeer and the mammoth in the Danubian steppes. His Neolithic successor seems not to have appeared in middle Europe before steppe conditions had passed away and a forest flora and fauna had become dominant.