SCOTLAND’S TREASURE

Taranaki Daily News, 13 October 1934, Page 21 (Supplement)

SCOTLAND’S TREASURE

STATUE OF 39,000 YEARS AGO. PUZZLE OF THE ICE AGES. A little statue carved by a man of tire Stone Age, perhaps 30,000 years ago, has been found in the. Kelvin Valley near Glasgow. The figure has been cut out of a pebble of fire-formed rock and is believed to be the figure of some Nature goddess worshipped by primitive man. The craftsman who cut it out of the hard rock has succeeded in shaping the arms, hands, and even the fingers to an amazing degree of accuracy. Small female figures by prehistoric artists have been found in. the rock shelters on the Continent, but this new find is a much better example of craftsmanship. Archaeologists have been working for years in the gravel in which this sculpture was found, and have been rewarded with such finds as the bones and teeth of the rhinoceros, fragments of mammoth tuslcs and, most remarkable of all, the thigh-bone of a rhinoceros carved into a shape suitable for use as a smoothing tool. The remarkable question arises how was it that man was able to exist in Scotland 30,000 years ago? Until quite recent times science had held the view that a vast ice-cap covered Scotland and Scandinavia up to some 10,000 years ago. In the north-west of Scotland its thickness was estimated as 1000 yards. This ice-sheet at no time extended south of the Thames; we know, too, that it came and went, for there was not one Ice Age but three or four. The distribution of the boulder clay, a glacial deposit, tells us something about these Ice Ages, for in the eastern counties of England four strata have been . found. They were deposited in the milder. intervals, but what the temperature was we can only guess, though from the animal remains we can gather clues. For instance, we find the reindeer and lemming of the cold North and the horse of our own temperate lands, together with the hippopotamus and the elephant, which prefer a warmer climate than exists in England now. The Scottish finds belong to periods definitely prior to the last Ice Age, so we can only assume that the ice-cap must have gone back to the Arctic from time to time instead of going part of the Way back, and that during one or more of these intervals man dwelled in African warmth with the rhinoceros north of the Tweed, as he did in the Cresswell Crags of Derbyshire,