A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



than eight different kinds of cereals) ; he appears in this country accom- 

 panied by domestic animals, such as the dog, sheep, goat, pig and horse ; 

 he was acquainted with spinning, weaving and pottery-making; remains 

 of his mining operations for flint to make his implements and weapons 

 have been found at Brandon in Suffolk and at Cissbury Camp near 

 Worthing. Altogether, judging from his remains, we may conclude 

 that the advance of Neolithic man in civilization was a decidedly marked 

 one as compared with Palaeolithic man, who lived in the hunter stage 

 of existence. During the Neolithic age in Britain man was a farmer, 

 a manufacturer, a miner. The same kind of domestic animals they 

 brought with them are with us at the present, and (in spite of the 

 bad times) the farmer still grows the cereals introduced by Neolithic 

 man. Remains of the same little, long-headed people have been found 

 in Belgium, France and Spain, and in the peat bogs of Denmark and the 

 north of Germany the same type of skull occurs, showing that man 

 in this state of culture had spread over a wide area on the continent. 

 They are thought to have been the Iberians of history. Those people 

 which most resemble them at the present day and who are held to be 

 of the Iberic stock are the Basques of the Pyrenees. 



In both this age and the succeeding one of Bronze, it is most 

 probable that the greater part of what is now Northamptonshire con- 

 sisted of forest and swamp, with a large tract of upland in the centre. 

 The north-eastern side of the county lying east of a line drawn from 

 about Market Harborough to Northampton, and extending to the 

 Fen country in the neighbourhood of Peterborough, was one vast forest 

 (known in later times as Rockingham Forest') lying between the two 

 valleys now occupied by the fertile meadows of the Nene and the 

 Welland, which were at this early period but marsh and morass, and 

 through which the rivers followed their sluggish course to the sea. 

 To the west of this line lay the upland district. In the southern part 

 of the county probably there was another large area of woodland ; part 

 of this is now represented by the remains of Salcey and Whittlebury 

 Forests, at that time conterminous. Northamptonshire then being 

 under those conditions, we need not wonder at the somewhat scanty 

 remains of this period found within the limits of the county as compared 

 with the richness of the remains found in some of those counties which 

 possess higher ground, upon the summits of which the earlier inhabitants 

 placed their camps and refuges, and upon whose slopes so many remains 

 of their habitations are still to be seen. 



In the standard English work on Stone Implements^ the author 

 gives an index to the localities of the finds of Palaeolithic and Neolithic 

 weapons, etc., arranged under the counties they have been discovered in. 

 From this index have been taken the numbers of places in those counties 



' In a per.imbul.ition dated 14th of Edward I. Rockingham Forest is described as extending from 

 Northampton to Stamford, and from the river Nene on the south to the Welland and Maidwell on the 

 north-east. 



2 The Ancient Stone Implements, Weapons and Ornaments of Great Britain, by Sir John Evans, 2 ed. ( 1 897). 



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