HARD WICKE 'S S CIENCE -GOSS IP. 



99 



caves of St. Martin d'Excideuil, whilst in the 

 lower beds we get the rudest tools made of pebbles or 

 flints fashioned in the roughest way, overlying these 

 in the higher deposits are found more elaborate ones, 

 accompanied by bone needles, harpoons, arrow- 

 heads, and other implements. Another point worthy 

 of notice in connection with these primitive men is 

 that they were not all of them such utter savages as 

 we might have supposed. Evidence has been 

 gathered, showing that even the higher forms of art 

 had followers in those early ages of the world's 

 history ; bones skilfully engraved have been found in 

 some caverns, especially in those of the Dordogne in 

 France, and in this country the Robin Hood Cave at 

 .Creswell has yielded one solitary British example. 

 On these bones, fragments of rein-deer antlers, or 

 ribs, are seen roughly, yet very beautifully, drawn ; 

 figures of rein-deer, Arctic foxes, horses, and even of 

 the great woolly mammoth, all perfectly recognizable, 

 and showing beyond all doubt that the engravers 

 must have been thoroughly familiar with the forms of 

 the animals they drew so well, and that therefore 

 man and these animals must have lived side by side 

 in these countries. These men were essentially 

 hunters and fishermen, and it is not improbable that 

 they lived very similarly, in most respects, to the 

 Esquimaux of to-day ; so much so, indeed, that it 

 has even been suggested that these latter may be 

 their remote descendants. These men, then, who 

 chased the rein-deer and the horse, the bison, 

 and the urus in the forests and plains of Northern 

 Europe, and harpooned the fish in its rivers, were 

 the first men of whom we have any positive traces ; 

 and because they used as their chief implements those 

 made of stone, they are called the Palaeolithic or 

 Old Stone Men, and the age in which they lived is 

 known to geologists as the Palaeolithic age. After 

 their age, and when they lived it appears impossible 

 to guess at, great changes, involving a long lapse of 

 time, must have taken place. The climate became 

 milder, England sank lower, and the sea again made 

 ts way between us and the Continent, and these 

 islands became, in some respects, what they are now. 

 The animals of the Pleistocene age gradually 

 disappeared ; some died out altogether, others, such 

 as the lions and the hyaenas, retreated to more 

 southern climes, and some others lingered on for 

 awhile to be extinguished in time by the repeated 

 attacks of man. 



A new race of men have now made their appear- 

 ance ; different in their physical conformation, as 

 shown by the shape of their skulls, &c. ; different also 

 in their degree of civilization and in their companion- 

 ships. These were the men of the Neolithic or New 

 Stone age. Stone was still used for tools and for 

 weapons ; but the flint or other material was far more 

 skilfully wrought, and it was not only chipped into 

 shape with the utmost perfection, but was also 

 frequently ground to an edge more or less polished. ' 



These Neolithic men introduced into Europe many 

 of (he animals which are now familiar to us ; the 

 domestic hog, the small ox, called the Celtic short- 

 horn ; the sheep, goat, and others. They also brought 

 with them the cereals, wheat, &c. ; and so man, from 

 having been merely a hunter and fisherman, at last 

 settled down into a dweller of more fixed habits, and 

 was, in his way, an agriculturist and shepherd ; he 

 was also a bit of a potter, rude fragments of earthen- 

 ware vessels having been found not unfrequently with 

 remains of this period. Neolithic man, although not 

 so essentially a hunter as his predecessors, yet neces- 

 sarily depended in a great measure on the chase for 

 his sustenance. Hares, horses, stags, oxen, goats, 

 and other animals would supply him with abundant 

 food. 



It has been thought, with considerable probability, 

 that traces of these Neolithic men still exist amongst 

 the populations of Europe ; the Basques of Spain, 

 and an allied race in the South of France, as well 

 as in Brittany, and the small swarthy Welshman of 

 Denbighshire, and others of a similar type in Ireland, 

 are possibly the remote descendants of these primitive 

 men. 



When the next tide of human immigration swept 

 over Europe, it brought with it an art destined ere 

 long to sweep the old stone implements away. The 

 incoming men were those of what has been termed 

 the Bronze age. Their tools, and weapons, and 

 ornaments were largely made of that alloy of copper 

 and tin we call bronze. Poorer people would doubt- 

 less continue for awhile to make use of stone imple- 

 ments ; but the metal was the characteristic feature 

 of the period. A small race of men were these users 

 of bronze, as is witnessed to by the smallness of the 

 sword-handles, bracelets, and other objects ; and 

 judging by this and by symbolical ornamentations 

 sometimes seen in their works, they would seem to 

 have entered Europe from the East, and to have been 

 either an Asiatic or Egyptian race. It may be ob- 

 served that the Bronze men were in the regular habit 

 of either burning or burying their dead, whose remains 

 are frequently met with in tumuli. 



Magnificent weapons were many of these bronze 

 ones. Finely-shaped axes, called celts, swords and 

 daggers of very peculiar and perfect forms, spear- 

 heads, and knives, bracelets, pins, and other orna- 

 ments have been found in large numbers in Denmark, 

 in Germany, Switzerland, and Ireland, and in a 

 somewhat lesser quantity in this country. Man by 

 this time had, at any rate, for the most part, forsaken 

 the cave-dwelling for the hut ; he had even learnt to 

 build himself villages ; these were often, for pro- 

 tection, skilfully constructed on piles, in lakes, or 

 were walled round ; the remains of lake dwellings, 

 some of them even belonging to the earlier Stone 

 ■ age, have been found in considerable numbers in the 

 Swiss lakes, and also in Ireland. The man of the 



Bronze age had become a weaver as well as a potter ; 



F 2 



