Page:The Journal of geology (IA journalofgeology21894univers).pdf/152
will immediately vanish when the two great humid periods are regarded not as proteroglacial and as deuteroglacial, but as deuteroglacial and subglacial or—what I think is more probable—as correlate with the two Norwegian post-glacial warm periods (before and after the subglacial), the climatic changes caused by a shifting of the pole westwards, which alone is able to account for the late glaciation of the Cordilleras in Atlantic post-glacial.
At last also the subglacial remainder of the inland ice commenced to melt away in the warm subboreal period. The country rose farther above the sea, and finally, by some intermediate steps, attained its present position. The modern sea beach shows everywhere so great a development, and is so sharply built, that all alleged displacement in historical times must be received with the greatest distrust. We have, notwithstanding all such relations, full reason to maintain that the seashore since the ice left has remained practically unchanged, as also the climate in historical time. We have reached the constant recent period in the most rigorous sense, and therewith conclude our synopsis of the Quaternary history of Norway.
There is, however, yet a problem of capital interest, which I cannot quite pass even in this short account. It is the question, When did man appear in geological history? The evidence given in Norway is, however, not very direct. We have seen that all traces of preglacial life were swept away, except the littoral find at great depth at Storeggen. We have also seen that the traces of interglacial life are very doubtful, and that we were obliged to go to Denmark to get better information about interglacial time. We have found that the Arctic flora here (with the reindeer) which flourished upon the proteroglacial bottom moraine, was superseded by the aspen vegetation (with elk) when the reindeer had already disappeared (J. Steenstrup). Now we know that in central Europe paleolithic man was contemporaneous with the reindeer, which will date this reindeer period back to the close of the proteroglacial time, and probably yet higher up. But in Denmark, it is only with the next vegetation, with Pinus sylvestris, that the first traces of man