CHAP. VIIL] DEFINITION OF THE PREHISTORIC PERIOD. 247 



ture, and his passage from the condition of the farmer 

 and herdsman to that of the merchant and manufacturer. 

 Instead of the wanderer dependent on the chase, we have 

 to deal with the dweller in fixed habitations, and with 

 those social conditions which follow from men being 

 massed together in various centres for the common good. 

 We have to chronicle in the Prehistoric period the 

 changes wrought in Europe by the invasion of new 

 peoples, -and the appearance of new civilisations 

 changes similar to those which are now rapidly causing 

 the hunters of the bison in the far west to disappear 

 before the advance of the English colonist. 



Definition of the Prehistoric Period. 



The Prehistoric period covers all the events which 

 took place between the Pleistocene age on the one hand 

 and the beginning of history on the other. To it belong 

 most of the alluvia and the peat-bogs, as well as the 

 contents of certain caverns characterised by the presence 

 of the wild mammalia now living in Europe, and of the 

 wild or half-wild animals which had escaped from their 

 servitude to man. One species only of all the mammals 

 then alive, the Irish elk, has since become extinct. 

 Man appears in the Neolithic stage of culture, or that 

 of polished stone, along with the stocks of the more 

 important of the domestic animals, and many of the 

 cultivated seeds and fruits. Subsequently in the long 

 course of ages bronze became known, and then iron, each 

 causing a great change in the arts and the social condition 

 of the people. 1 Polished stone, bronze, and iron, it must 



1 For further details as to this classification, see Evans, Ancient Stone 

 Implements, c. i. ; and Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, c. i. 



