CHAP, vin.] GENERAL CONCLUSIONS. 307 



would be a more serious obstacle to the canoes made 

 out of the trunk of a big tree than to a Eoman fleet. 

 The south-eastern derivation of the Neolithic peoples 

 will go far to explain the sharp line of demarcation 

 between them and their predecessors the Cave-men, who 

 retreated before them farther to the north and to the 

 north-east. 



General Conclusions. 



The Neolithic implements, and the domestic animals 

 and plants, described in the preceding pages, have been 

 discovered over the whole of Europe with the exception 

 of northern Kussia and northern Scandinavia. They 

 imply that the Neolithic civilisation was long established, 

 and that it underwent so little change, if any, in the lapse 

 of ages that no traces of a change have been preserved to 

 our times. Its duration varied in different countries, 

 and it yielded place to a higher culture in Greece and 

 Italy long before it passed away from central and 

 northern Europe. Glass beads brought from the Medi- 

 terranean, and probably of Phoenician work, occur in the 

 Neolithic tombs of France, and in the pile-dwellings of 

 Switzerland. There is every reason to believe that 

 Egypt and Assyria were highly organised empires, and 

 that the Mediterranean peoples were far advanced in the 

 path of civilisation, while the Neolithic phase held its 

 ground in France and Germany, in Britain and in Scan- 

 dinavia. 



The introduction of this civilisation is the starting- 

 point of the history of the present inhabitants of Europe. 

 To the Neolithic peoples we owe the rudiments of the 

 culture which we ourselves enjoy. The arts which they 

 introduced have never been forgotten, and all subsequent 



