Page 244 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

THE GLAC)AL PERIOD 31
( 4 ) The different ages of Stone, Bronze and Iron were not
synchronous in different countries, and the high state of civilisa-
tion in Egypt is not, therefore, inconsistent with the Neolithic
stage of European civilisation at the time.
( 5 ) According to the latest geological evidence, which
cannot be lightly set aside, the last Glacial period must have
closed and the Post-Glacial commenced at about I 0,000 years
ago, or 8,000 B. C. at the best, and the freshness of the Siberian
fossil-deposits favours this view.
( 6 ) Man is not merely Post-Glacial as he was believed to
be some years ago, and there is conclusive geological evidence
to prove his wide-spread existence in the Quaternary, if not also
in Tertiary, era.
( 7 ) There were at least two Glacial and one Inter-Glacial
period, and the geographical distribution of land and water on
earth during the Inter-Glacial period was quite different from
what it is at present.
( 8 ) There were great vicissitudes of climate in the Pleisto-
cene period, it being cold and inclement during the Glacial, and
mild and temperate in the Inter-Glacial period, even as far as
the Polar regions.
( 9 ) There is enough evidence to show that the Arctic re-
gions, both in Asia and Europe, were characterised in the Inter-
Glacial period by cool summers and warm winters,-a sort of,
what Herschel calls, a perpetual spring; and that places like Spitz-
bergen, where the sun goes below the horizon from November
till March, were once the seat of luxuriant vegetation, that grows,
at present, only in the temperate or the tropical climate.
( 10 ) It was the coming on of the Glacial age that destroy-
ed this genial climate, and rendered the regions unsuited for
the habitation of tropical plants and animals.
( 11 ) There are various estimates regarding the duration
of the Glacial period, but in the present state of our knowledge
it is safer to rely on geology than on astronomy in this respect,
though as regards the causes of the Ice Age the astronomical
explanation appears to be more probable.
( 12 ) According to Prof. Geikie there is evidence to hold
that there were, in all, five Glacial and four Inter-Glacial epochs,
and that even the beginning of the Post-Glacial period was marked