340 EARLY MAN IN BRITAIN. [CHAP. ix. 



were used for offerings when the village was desolated 

 by the Plague. The Pin Hole Cave, in Cresswell Crags, 

 derives its name from the habit of putting pins into 

 a hole, and is to be looked upon as a survival of this 

 superstition in the north of England, which has been 

 traced as far south as the Pyrenees, and has left its 

 mark in the holed-stones of India. The worship of 

 ancestry is probably one of the oldest forms of worship, 

 if not the oldest, in the world, and it still survives in 

 Europe in the respect paid to elves, fairies, and " little- 



men." 



General Conclusions. 



From the facts mentioned in the last two chapters, 

 it will be seen that the continuity between the Neolithic 

 age and the present day has been unbroken. It is 

 marked not merely by the physique "of the present 

 Europeans, by many of the domestic animals and culti- 

 vated seeds and fruits, and many of the arts, but by the 

 testimony of language, and it is emphasised by the 

 survival of the Neolithic faith in the shape of widely- 

 spread superstitions. In every respect the Neolithic 

 immigrant into Europe was immeasurably superior to 

 the Palaeolithic man of the caverns. 



At the beginning of the Prehistoric period the small, 

 dark, non-Aryan farmers and herdsmen passed into 

 Europe from Central Asia, bringing with them the Neo- 

 lithic civilisation, which took deep root. The section 

 of them which spread over Gaul, Spain, and the British 

 Isles, is only known to us as the Iberic aborigines. 

 Outside these limits we meet with traces of the Iberic 

 peoples in Sicily, Sardinia, and in Northern Africa. 

 They have also left their mark in Asia Minor in the 



