ABSTRACT
In sub-Saharan Africa there are obvious difficulties in correlation of local Pleistocene stages with that sequence established even in another nearby region. This is a consequence of poor preservation of mammalian fossils in many situations as well as the still inadequately understood climatic conditions of the Pleistocene in tropical and subtropical latitudes. The difficulties of intercontinental correlation are far greater and these we recognize. In terms of the general East African succession, established on lithological units and their contained mammal faunas, our concern extends from a time within the KamasianKanjeran stage, through the Kanjeran and Kanjeran-Gamblian stages into the early Gamblian stage. W e believe these designated intervals of Pleistocene time, best recognized in Eastern and Central, and parts of South Africa, to correspond brondly with the aforementioned European stages of later Middle and earlier Upper Pleistocene time. Direct correlations with Europe are tenuous, especially those based upon presumed but often still unproven climatic changes adjudged to correspond with, and to be conditioned by, glacial-interglacial conditions in northern latitudes. Such correlations are best established on mammalian faunal grounds and on pollen evidence; the available faunal evidence, and what little is yet available from pollen, does not conflict with the correlation suggested above. The correlation problem can best be settled by absolute age determinations, such as will eventuate from the refinement of the potassium-argon (K/A), 458
and perhaps other methods, including radiocarbon for the terminal stages of the Acheulian.
