
27 
PREHISTORIC. MAN IN BRITAIN 
AND EUROPE. 
(ILLUSTRATED BY THE LANTERN). 
By A. R. Pickles, B.A., Burnley. February 20th, 1906. 
The lecturer said the fundmental task of a liberal education 
was to waken and to keep ever alert the faculty of wonder in 
the human soul. World history and life history were more 
marvellous than the most fantastic Arabian Night to the 
awakened intelligence. The common sights and sounds of 
an English country side were only the last terms in a racial 
record of untold centuries. Their profounder significance, 
their psychological and sociological import yielded itself up 
only to mature and earnest study, yet a right understanding of 
the history of the past was indispensable to the rational 
moulding of the future. What science was to the citizen of 
the universe, history was to the citizen of the state,—the illum- 
inant and stimulant of his social life. 
The facts on which the story of early man was founded, were 
considerable in number and of consuming interest. As we 
could read in the rocks beneath our feet the earth history of 
ages, so the history of man was to be found sealed up in the 
accumulation of sand and gravel formed by rivers, layers of 
earth in caves, in heaps of refuse like those of the rock shelters 
in the South of France, or the kitchen-middens of Denmark 
and Scotland, or in the mounds or barrows where prehistoric 
man lies buried. 
Prehistoric times were generally considered to embrace three 
periods, the basis of division being in the nature of the weapons 
used by early man. First, the paleolithic, or earlier stone 
age, during which men who lived by hunting made their flint 
implements by chipping only. Then, the neolithic, or newer 
stone age, the time when flint weapons were ground and 
polished, and when the ruder arts of agriculture were practised. 
Next came the bronze age, which may be said to be the begin- 
ning of civilisation, for the art of melting copper was known. 
Hence the knowledge of the use of metals. Lastly came the 
iron age, when the art of writing was invented 
