Mr. J. Allen Brown contributed to the Anthropological Institute (1892) an elaborate paper "On the continuity of the Palæolithic and Neolithic periods," in which his line of argument is thus stated :—
"The supposed break in the continuity of the Stone Age in this country is bridged over by the discovery of implements of later Palæolithic type and of others which from their form may be regarded as of transition or intermediate age, in some combes and dry valleys associated with deposits of chalk and flint rubble in parts of Sussex, as well as with other accumulations and formations to which I shall refer as being of more recent date than the high level river drifts. The gradual change in mammalian life which appears to have accompanied these higher stages of the Stone Age will also be considered." (Journal, vol. xxii., p. 67.)
A prima facie objection to Mr Brown's method is that no legitimate inference can be drawn from a graduated series of stone implements picked up on the surface, as in all large finds and workshops of Neolithic implements a sufficient number of unfinished, or roughly made, specimens may be readily found which, in appearance, can be paralleled with the later Palæolithic types. In the following year (1893), and at the same Society, Professor Boyd Dawkins read a paper "On the relation of the Palæolithic to the Neolithic period," in which his opinion is thus stated :—
"If, however, the results as I read them, over the whole of Europe, point to the great interval dividing the Palæolithic from the Neolithic Age, and to the great geographical break between them, still more shall we find these conclusions confirmed by the contrast between the Palæolithic and Neolithic civilisations. On the one hand it is unnecessary to labour the minute details the Palæolithic man lived by hunting the wild animals on the Pleistocene continent, armed with rude implements of stone and bone, and ignorant of all the domestic animals, including the hunting dog. He was a fire-using nomad, without fixed habitation. On the other hand, the Neolithic man appears before us a herdsman and tiller of the ground, depending on his domestic animals, and the cultivated fruits and seeds rather than on hunting ; master of the potter's art, and of the mysteries of spinning, and weaving, and seeking the materials for his tools by mining. He lived in fixed habitations, and buried his dead in tombs. There is obviously a great gulf fixed between the rude hunter civilisation of the one, and the agricultural and pastoral civilisation of the other, a gulf which has not yet been bridged over by discoveries in any part of the world." (Journal, vol. xxiii., p. 248.)
