A HISTORY OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE 



THE PALAEOLITHIC AGE 



A line drawn from the Dee to the Humber seems to mark a limit 

 beyond which palaeolithic man rarely passed. Scarcely any instances are 

 recorded of palaeolithic implements being found even as far north as the 

 now famous Creswell Caves. The Rev. J. M. Mello began the explora- 

 tion of these caves in 1875 along with Professor Boyd Dawkins, and it 

 was at once clear that the discoveries made there were very important for 

 the early history of man. 



The Creswell Crags line the two sides of a beautiful ravine which 

 marks the boundary between the counties of Nottingham and Derby. 

 The crags are of magnesian limestone. By the percolation of water 

 along the joints of this rock, dissolving away its soluble constituents, 

 passages have been slowly formed and gradually enlarged into caverns. 

 Of these caverns the greater part are on the Derbyshire side of the ravine. 

 But one of the chief of them, which is known as the Church Hole Cave, 

 is upon the southern or Nottinghamshire side. On digging through the 

 cave bottom, there were found the following strata of deposits : first a super- 

 ficial layer at the entrance of the cave, lying upon the stalagmite ; this 

 contained remains of the late Bronze Age : second, stalagmitic breccia in 

 places and beneath it an accumulation of earth and sand with clay ; the 

 implements found were of bone, antler, and flint : third and lowest was a 

 layer of red sand which contained rough implements of quartzite. The 

 animal remains which accompanied the implements in the two lower 

 layers show that we have here relics of two successive occupations of 

 palaeolithic man in the late Pleistocene Age. 1 



At the time of these occupations the great Ice Age was already a 

 thing of the past. The ice cap was retreating northwards, although the 

 scanty traces of human occupation seem to show that it still covered the 

 northern part of the island, or rather, we should say, the northern part 

 of what is now Great Britain. For the British Isles were not yet formed, 

 so different was the distribution of land and sea from that of the present 

 time. The coast of Europe extended westward beyond the furthest shores 

 of Ireland, and northward beyond the Orkneys. The Thames was a mere 

 tributary of the Rhine, which flowed northward into a gulf of which 

 Norway marked the eastern side. This wild region was covered with 

 forests of oak and pine, through which there rose snow-capped ridges 

 having glaciers on their lower slopes. Here man contended with a 

 mingled host of arctic and southern animals : on the one hand, the bear, 

 mammoth, and reindeer ; on the other, the lion, the hyena, and the woolly 

 rhinoceros. For the bones of these animals are found in the caves of 

 Creswell along with the traces of man's presence. The rough tools and 

 weapons of the red sand show the extent of his skill in manufacture. 

 His civilization was at least as advanced as that of the Tasmanians, who 

 used similar weapons of stone when they came first into contact with 

 European settlers. 3 As their experience increased and their skill developed, 



1 Quart. Journ. Geol. Sac. xxxiii, 602 f. ' E. B. Tylor, Enc. Brit, xxv, 466. 



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