A HISTORY OF WORCESTERSHIRE 



on the other.' ^ It commences with the time when by a great submer- 

 gence Britain was separated from the continent on the east and from 

 Ireland on the west — when this subsidence of the land made the large 

 estuaries of the Severn and Avon. This subsidence and its results must 

 have produced a profound change in the general conditions of the country. 

 It was no longer part of the regular continental system. It had become 

 an isolated sea-girt region ; the great beasts, being no longer recruited by 

 wanderers from the continent, soon became extinct. The inhabitants 

 were no longer nomadic tribes, having the whole continent of Europe 

 to wander over ; they were confined to a narrow locality, and this con- 

 finement must have deeply affected their modes of life, especially when 

 in all probability it was accompanied by considerable climatic changes, 

 necessitating an alteration in the people's habits. It is impossible to fix 

 the period during which these great changes were brought about, or to 

 give anything like dates for their beginning or their end. All that can be 

 said is that the Prehistoric period extends from the time of the separation 

 of Britain from the continent to the time of Caesar's invasion. Between 

 these two limits the inhabitants of these islands passed from the stage of 

 the Paleolithic man to the civilization which they possessed when the 

 earliest historic record of them is reached. During this interval their 

 development was enormous and must have occupied long series of years, 

 how many it is impossible to say. A modern writer puts it at somewhere 

 about 270,000 years,^ this, it is needless to say, is only his guess. 



The interval between the separation from the continent and historic 

 times is divisible into three distinct periods, called either after the weapons 

 (a) Neolithic, (i) Bronze and (c) Iron, or after the people using those 

 weapons (a) Iberian, {l>) Goidelic and (c) Brythonic. 



Traces of each of these periods, mostly consisting of finds of the 

 weapons, have been discovered in the southern and western parts of 

 Worcestershire, but so far in the north and east of the county nothing 

 has been found. 



The present height of the Severn at Worcester and of the Avon at 

 Evesham, under 100 feet above sea-level, proves that one great feature 

 in the history of the county since the subsidence has been the silting up 

 of the estuaries. In this silt remains have been found which can be 

 ascribed to each of the three periods of the Prehistoric age. 



The men of the Neolithic times, so far as our present evidence goes, 

 were mostly herdsmen and flockmasters. When they advanced into 

 Worcestershire, they settled on the highlands which overlook the rich 

 pastures of the river valleys. In Worcestershire these highlands were (a) 

 the Lickey Hills, that ridge of hills running across the county from Alve- 

 church to Stourbridge ; {i) the Malvern Hills, the ridge running north 

 and south and forming the western county boundary ; and (c) Bredon 

 Hill, the great detached outlier of the Cotswolds on the south. Each 

 of these three groups of hills has furnished evidence of the presence of 

 Neolithic settlers in the shape of weapons and implements. 



' Ear/y Man, p. 247. * Hackel, The Last Link, 149. 



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