BESIDE THE CROMLECH. 201 



the historical point of view, are quite modern 

 in the geological or even the anthropological 

 estimate. They have been erected a long 

 way on the hither side of the glacial epoch. 

 There were men in Britain before the last ice 

 age, and they have left their memorials in 

 the rough chipped flint implements of the 

 drift and on the hardened floor of caves ; but 

 every trace of their presence has of course 

 been planed off the actual surface of the 

 country by the great sheets of ice which, 

 during the last glaciation, ground down the 

 whole face of England into bare undulating 

 folds of naked rock. The prehistoric monu- 

 ments which we now find on the surface of 

 the land, like this Welsh cromlech or the 

 numerous barrows of our English downs, 

 belong to a much later race, as one can see 

 at once from the very fact that they are so 

 often built up of glacial boulders. Indeed, 

 the earlier .preglacial men were mere hunting 

 savages of the rudest type, wholly incapable 

 of co-operation for works such as these ; so 



