The Meeting-Place of Geology and History

A geological and archaeological survey traces the border between deep earth history and the beginnings of human records, assembling stratigraphic, fossil, and artifact evidence to date and characterize early human presence. It outlines an earlier palanthropic phase and a later neanthropic phase, describing stone tools, skeletal remains, burial customs, and environmental settings, and considers subdivisions and the close of the earlier period. Geological methods are applied to debated questions such as a great deluge, the geography of primeval homelands, and subsequent postdiluvian migrations in the Near East, with maps and illustrations used to correlate physical and historical data.