THE KINGDOM OF MAN 



What were the Stone Ages ? In the long years before 

 primitive man learned to weld iron or bronze he formed 

 his weapons and his tools from stone and flint ; and 

 geologists and antiquarians have discovered several of 

 these "Ages of Stone" of different periods. For example, 

 the Stone Age which our grandfathers spoke of is now 

 called the Neolithic Age ; and in the second quarter of 

 the last century it became gradually admitted that man 

 had existed earlier than that and had swung hammers 

 and chipped edges in what we now call Palaeolithic times. 

 That would put man back to the age of the Mammoth. 

 But in the last quarter of last century a new claim arose. 

 The Palaeolithic stone weapons and tools were made 

 150,000 years ago, and were manufactured with great 

 skill and even artistic feeling. Within the last ten years 

 much rougher flint implements of peculiar types have 

 been found in gravels which are 500 to 700 feet above 

 the level of the existing [rivers in the drift of which 

 Palaeolithic implements were found. To these older, 

 clumsier weapons and tools if, indeed, implements they 

 be the name Eoliths was given by Mr. J. Allen Brown. 

 These Eoliths of the south of England and of Belgium 

 indicate a race of men of less developed skill than the 

 makers of the Palaeoliths, and carry the antiquity of man 

 at least as far back beyond the Palaeoliths as these are 

 from the present day. So much for speculation. But are 

 the Eoliths truly implements, or are they, as a determined 

 school of anthropologists assert, merely flints which fortui- 

 tously resemble the rougher variety of true Palaeolith ? 

 The strongest attack made on their authenticity comes 



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