146 PROCEEDINGS COTTESWOLD CLUB 191 1 



may mean or whatever may have been his attributes, we have 

 the satisfaction to learn that he has not been recognised 

 among the Continental Celts, and that his affinities are to be 

 found in one of the many figures which are included in the 

 Welsh or Irish Celtic pantheon. 



But even if we are unable to trace survivals of neolithic 

 beliefs in Druidism, the continuity of culture is so striking in 

 this district that I venture now to direct your attention to 

 some examples which illustrate it. The human mind, in- 

 fluenced though it may be by climatic and other forms of 

 environment, works with remarkable uniformity. In addition 

 to this, we have much evidence to show that in spite of the 

 entry of foreign tribes, the racial type is remarkable persistent. 

 Our veteran anthropologist, Dr John Beddoe, asserts that 

 traces of palaeolithic man can still be identified in Wales and 

 Western England ; and he quotes examples of people of low 

 stature, with broad cheek bones, receding foreheads, flat noses, 

 narrow chins and protruding jaws, whom he identifies with 

 this earlier race. To this, however, it may reasonably be 

 objected that between palaeolithic and neolithic man there is 

 a vast geological and cultural gap. While palaeolithic man 

 possessed no ordinary artistic capacity, as is proved by the 

 admirable engravings on bone or ivory of a contemporary and 

 now extinct fauna, this power is almost entirely absent in 

 their neolithic successors, whose pottery is generally orna- 

 mented in the geometrical type of decoration. The differences 

 of material culture are still more apparent. The earlier race 

 lived in caves, hunted for food animals no longer existent, and 

 possessed only the very rudest flint implements, being ap- 

 parently ignorant of the use of the bow. The neolithic folk 

 had succeeded in domesticating many of the animals which we 

 now possess, lived in rude huts or wind shelters, as the Austra- 

 lian Aborigines do now, had acquired the art of making pottery, 

 and unusual skill in chipping and polishing the knives, daggers 

 and spear heads which are found in abundance in this district. 



For practical purposes we need not concern ourselves with 

 palaeolithic man, because we seem to have no evidence of his 

 existence in this district. Mr W. J. Gray has, I am glad to 

 say, collected much evidence about primitive man and his 



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