PKIMITIVE MAN : II. NEOLITHIC MAN. 275 



Caves. 



Caves were still frequently made use of as dwellings, as 

 well as for burial places, and in the upper part of the floors 

 of many of those which contain remains of the Pleistocene 

 age and of PaltBolithic man, we find the bones of a more 

 recent fauna, and also the implements and pottery of 

 Neolithic times. Many of the French, Belgian, and British 

 caves, as well as others in Italy, Spain, and elsewhere, are 

 rich in remains of this age, but the most interesting relics of 

 Neolithic man are found amongst dwelling places of a 

 different character, and in tombs of a special type. 



Houses and Forts. 



We have observed that when Neolithic man made his 

 appearance in Europe he brought with him domestic animals, 

 and that he was also to some extent an agriculturist. This 

 implies that his manner of life must have been of a more 

 sedentary nature than that of his predecessors, and we have 

 facts to prove that this was really the case ; that families or 

 tribes gathered together in settled communities, and built 

 houses, or huts, which they inhabited for a length of tin^e. 

 Sometimes fortified stations were formed on high ground 

 within which circular pits dug in the soil and roofed over 

 Avith Avattled huts Avere the dAvellings of these people. At 

 Fisherton, near Salisbury, a number of such pits have been 

 found containing the relics of their Neolithic occupants ; 

 these prehistoric dwellings were bottle-shaped, having a 

 depth of from seven to eight feet, Avith a narroAv circular 

 opening of about three feet at the surface, and Avidening at 

 the bottom to from five to seven feet. Very similar dAvel- 

 lings occur in France as well as in many other localities. On 

 the elevated plateaux of Chassey (Saone-et-Loire), also at 

 Campigny (Seiue-Inferieure) such pits are found, at the bottom 

 of Avhich Avere seen the hearth-stones Avith ashes in the centre, 

 and also the remains of the food and the implements of theii* 

 former inhabitants. 



In some parts of Scotland, as in Caithness and Shetland, 

 the remains of Neolithic habitations of a diff"erent character 

 occur, these, which antiquaries term burghs, are built of 

 rough stones and must have been of considerable strength, 

 for some of them, or very similar ones, were occupied as forti- 

 fied posts in the loth century. 



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