100 PROCEEDINGS OF THE COTTESWOLD CLUB 



hunted their prey or defended their homes. Arrow- 

 heads, knives, scrapers, saws, borers were made of flint, 

 beautifully shaped adzes and hammers were of stone, and 

 hghter articles such as needles and pins were constructed 

 of bone. For how long these men dwelt in Gloucester- 

 shire no man knows. Whence they came and whither 

 they went no man can tell. 



But early as these Iberian stone and flint-using folk 

 were, investigations made during the last fifty years, and 

 particularly during the last twenty years, show that there 

 were other races far earlier. In two caves on the banks 

 of the Wye, and in a cavern near Lydney, remains of man 

 have been found covered by beds of earth, gravel and 

 stalagmite. The thickness of the beds of stalagmite 

 indicates the dropping of lime-charged water from the 

 cavern roof during a very long period, and" it is difficult to 

 avoid the conclusion that the beds of earth and gravel 

 were swept in by streams which once flowed at the same 

 level as the cavern floor — a level far above that at which 

 the nearest streams now flow. In many caves the bones 

 of extinct animals are associated with human remains, 

 thus placing the great antiquity of the cave dwellers 

 beyond any reasonable doubt. Even cave men, however, 

 were not the earliest Gloucestershire men. It is now 

 about fifty years since a French scientist found some 

 worked flints in a gravel bed many feet below the surface 

 of the soil. His theory that these flints were the remains 

 of men who lived when the gravel was deposited was at 

 first received with incredulity. In the course of a few 

 years worked flints were found under similar conditions 

 in other parts of Europe, and then men began to search 

 for them in England. The gravels in the valley of the 

 Thames speedily revealed evidence of man's existence 

 when the gravels were laid down, and similar evidence is 

 forthcoming from the valley of the Severn. The general 



