More than a century ago Macaulay reminded his readers that the England which he described in his History was a very different land from that with which they were familiar. The events of a bare hundred and fifty years had transformed the landscape. But the changes which had taken place between the ‘Glorious Revolution’ and the mid-nineteenth century were small compared with those which transformed the ancient world into the modern. If Macaulay had difficulty in reconstructing the landscape of the seventeenth century, the task facing the historian who would describe the European landscape when prehistory merged into history is incomparably greater. For the latter era the documentation is scanty; the evidence of geology and botany, slight, and that of archaeology all too often inconclusive.

At a time when the first histories were being written in the Aegean region man was still practising a Stone Age culture in parts of Scandinavia. In the former he could describe, though not always accurately or with understanding, the environment in which he lived; for the latter our evidence derives from the pollen trapped in the peatbogs, from varved clays in the riverine deposits, and from the scanty finds in human burials.

The reconstruction of the face of Europe at the beginning of the historical period must therefore call, not only on sources which are historical in the narrow sense, but also on the researches of the geologist, botanist, meteorologist and archaeologist.