12 A MILLION YEARS OF CHILDHOOD 



bone of primitive man we have at least a hundred 

 thousand of his stone implements, and these tell a 

 consistent, unequivocal story of very gradual advance 

 from the lowest savage level to civilization. In those 

 weapons and implements the slow progress of man 

 is more faithfully recorded than the advance of the 

 British race is recorded in its literature. They begin 

 with flints (Eoliths) so feebly and crudely chipped 

 that many experts refuse to see human workmanship 

 in them ; and there is a gradual evolution, without 

 the least gap or leap or sudden advance in intelligence, 

 from these to the elaborate tools and machines of 

 modern civilization. 



I have told this part of the story elsewhere, and 

 will give here only a brief and up-to-date outline of 

 it. We have no traces of man during the million 

 years after the close of the Oligocene Period. The 

 first implements we have are the Eoliths, found 

 chiefly in the eastern counties of England and in 

 Belgium. They may be put roundly at half~a-million 

 or more years ago, just before the Ice Age. Man 

 had already wandered from the south of Asia to 

 England (which was then a part of the continent), 

 and a fairly large population seems to have been 

 scattered over the broad valley which is now the 

 North Sea. The bones of the Ape-Man (Pithecan- 

 thropus) of Java best represent this early wave of 

 human distribution : a squat, ugly, beetle-browed, 

 brutal-jawed family, unclothed, and most probably 

 devoid of speech. 



Then we have the weapons which belong to the 

 early part of the Old Stone Age (Palaeolithic) — chiefly 

 oval flints which have been chipped with another 

 stone so as to form a "hand-axe" (a sort of stone 



