Their habitat was doubtless the desert slopes, often,
too, the plateaus themselves; but that they lived entirely upon the
plateaus, high up above the Nile marsh, is improbable. There, it is
true, we find their flint implements, the great pear-shaped weapons of
the types of Chelles, St. Acheul, and Le Moustier, types well known
to all who are acquainted with the flint implements of the "Drift" in
Europe. And it is there that the theory, generally accepted hitherto,
has placed the habitat of the makers and users of these implements.
The idea was that in Palaeolithic days, contemporary with the Glacial
Age of Northern Europe and America, the climate of Egypt was entirely
different from that of later times and of to-day. Instead of dry desert,
the mountain plateaus bordering the Nile valley were supposed to have
been then covered with forest, through which flowed countless streams
to feed the river below. It was suggested that remains of these streams
were to be seen in the side ravines, or wadis, of the Nile valley, which
run up from the low desert on the river level into the hills on either
hand. These wadis undoubtedly show extensive traces of strong water
action; they curve and twist as the streams found their easiest way
to the level through the softer strata, they are heaped up with great
water-worn boulders, they are hollowed out where waterfalls once fell.
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