CHAP, i.] SCOPE OF WORK. 5 



the Atlantic, the inhabitants of middle Europe were 

 gradually passing from the Bronze stage of culture 

 into that of Iron. The knowledge of Bronze was 

 spreading northwards, and the lower Neolithic civilisa- 

 tion, characterised by the use of polished stone, and the 

 ignorance of metals, formerly universal, was disappearing 

 from the more remote portions of the continent. 



Our inquiry into the progress of man reaches back 

 to a time far more distant than any of these events. 

 Before our ancestors were in Europe, and before our 

 country was an island, there were Palaeolithic tribes in 

 Britain, ignorant of the use of polished stone and of the 

 metals, without domestic animals, living solely by the 

 chase, fishing, and fowling ; of these, the older or the 

 Kiver-drift men, have left evidence that they wandered 

 over the greater part of western and southern Europe, 

 over North Africa, Asia Minor, and over the whole of 

 India ; while the newer, or the Cave men, have been 

 traced over a large part of Europe. Their mode of 

 life, and their relation to living races of men, the time 

 of their arrival in Europe as marked in the geological 

 record, and their surroundings, cannot fail to be of high 

 interest to all thoughtful men. 



In dealing with these difficult questions I propose to 

 place before the reader a definite idea of the various 

 changes which have taken place in Britain before the 

 written record, and to make early man the central 

 figure in the pictures of the successive changes presented 

 by geology and prehistoric archaeology. I have adopted 

 the historical method of beginning with the earliest 

 and working downwards with the current of events, 

 rather than that more usually adopted of ascending 

 the stream of time from the point of departure offered 



