Abstract
IN view of recent reference to the fact that evidence of a Palæolithic Age had not been found in Brittany (see NATURE, Aug. 21, p. 329), it is of interest to note that M. R. Mazeres records in the current number of L'Anthropologie(47, 3–4) that he has found a number of flint implements of that period, when examining the quaternary deposits of the cliffs in the bay of St. Brieuc (Cô te-du-Nord). The deposits include a lower and upper loess. Of these the lower, a gray loess attributed to the Riss glaciation, is ravined by interglacial deposits of marine origin, with an abundance of Buccinum reticulatum, and evidence of a superimposed raised beach at an altitude 8–9 metres, which would warrant an attribution to Mousterian, or Tyrrhenian II. Above this, and at times associated with traces of the raised beach, is the upper loess, showing evidence of two periods of deposition. In the earlier deposits of this phase were found a dozen flint implements of Mousterian facies, with flakes of diabase and other stone of the same technique in working, and the tooth of a reindeer. The use of stone other than flint is attributed to the scarcity of the latter material in the neighbourhood. The later deposits yielded two well-made carinated scrapers of flint of Middle Aurignacian type. In the same horizon, but at another site, were found a reindeer tooth and the tooth of one of the Bovidae. The attribution of the upper loess to Wurm I and Wurm II is thus confirmed by the character of the contained implements. M. Mazeres points out that, modest as these finds are, they serve to indicate the existence of a palaeolithic culture in Brittany. This is now apparently recorded for the first time ; but M. Mazeres recalls that in 1926 Prof. Milon and the Abbe Leclerc found a mammoth tusk in the loess to the north of Pleneuf, near the location of the present finds, and with it were flints which have not been studied.
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Palæolithic Man in Brittany. Nature 140, 352 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/140352a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/140352a0