532 



NATURE 



{Sept. 28, 1882 



their edges ground or polished first began. The period during 

 which they were exclusively employed has been called the 

 Neolithic or New Stone Period. It has also been called the 

 Surface Stone Period, as the relics belonging to it are usually 

 found upon or near the surface of the ground, and not at a 

 considerable depth below it, like those belonging to an earlier 

 chapter in our history, which actually form constituent parts of 

 extensive geological deposits. There is this also to be observed, 

 that the circumstances under which the stone implements of this 

 periods are found, prove that no very great alteration in the 

 general features of the country has taken place since the time 

 when they were in use. There was the same disposition of 

 hill and valley ; rivers ran along much the same course as now, 

 and at much the same level ; the same animals frequented the 

 country with but few exceptions, and though there may have 

 been incursions of foreign races of men, we find the Stone Age 

 shading off into the Bronze Age, and the latter into the Iron 

 Age, not many centuries before the Roman occupation Although 

 it is impossible to say for what length of time this Neolithic or 

 Surface Stone Period may have endured in Britain, there is little 

 on the face of the facts which of necessity implies a longer 

 existence for the human race than the six thousand years that 

 used commonly to be assigned to it. In other parts of the 

 world, as for instance in Egypt, there have been circumstances 

 brought to light which prove that the ordinary chronology is 

 insufficient for the history of those countries ; and, in addition, 

 there are facts known wilh regard to the development of 

 language which have led many students to the conclusion that the 

 antiquity of man is much greater than was commonly supposed. 

 And yet five-and-twenty years ago, or less, there was no one who 

 could point to traces of human occupation in Britain of an 

 earlier date than the polished stone instruments. I might, 

 perhaps, make an exception in favour of Mr. John Frere, who, 

 at the beginning of this century, inferred frrom the circumstances 

 under which some stone weapons were found, that they belonged 

 "to a very remote period indeed, even beyond that of the 

 present world." 



If it had been my lot to address you in 1858 instead of in 

 1882, I should myself have assured you that the earliest chapter 

 in our unwritten history was that which related to the polished 

 stone hatchets and the other forms of stone weapons and instru- 

 ments which are found associated with them. At the same time 

 I should not have agreed with Dr. Johnson, that " all that is 

 really known of the ancient state of Britain is contained in a few 

 pages. We can know no more than the old writers have told 

 us." But within the last twenty years what a lengthened vista 

 of the antiquity of our race has been opened out, and what a 

 marvellous chapter of unwritten history have we not to some 

 extent been able to read ! 



It is to that chapter that I must now turn, and, in examining 

 it, it will perhaps be best first to state some of the facts which 

 of late years have come to our knowledge, and then to show 

 what inferences have been drawn from them. 



Geologists have long been aware that along the valleys of our 

 principal rivers, generally at some height above their present 

 level, and often at some distance from the streams, there are beds 

 of gravel, sand, and brick-earth, frequently containing the 

 remains of land and fresh water shells, and the bones of various 

 animals. That these drift-deposits were not due to the action 

 of the sea is shown by the absence of sea-shells, while the 

 general resemblance of the land and fresh-water shells in them 

 to tho e in the existing stream and valley prove them to have 

 been deposited by fresh water. The presence in the beds of 

 the bones of land animals is abo corroborative of this view ; 

 while the fact that several of these beasts, such as the great 

 woolly elephant or mammoth, the rhinoceros, hippopotamus, 

 and reindeer, are of species now extinct, or no longer Known in 

 Britain, is suggestive of remote antiquity. In some cases shells 

 and bones have not been found, but the position and character 

 of the beds are such as to prove that they belong to the same 

 class, and are of the same age, as those in which such remains 

 occur. Here at Southampton we are on the tongue of land 

 which separates the valleys of the T. st and the Itchen, but the 

 drift-beds in these valleys have not been as yet very carefully 

 examined above Southampton,though at Swathling an elephant's 

 tooth has been found in the gravel. The next valley westward, 

 that of the Avon, which runs into the sea at Christchurch, has 

 been more productive. Along that valley numerous beds of 

 drifted deposits have been examined, and at Salisbury, besides 

 land and fresh-water shells, the bones of elephant, rhinoceros, 



hyaena, lion, and reindeer have been found in them, as well as 

 those of s me other animals, among which the pouched marmot 

 and the Greenland lemming may be mentioned. These are 

 especially indicative of a cold climate, as are a'so some egg-shells 

 of the wild goose, which now only breeds in northern latitudes. 

 Some of the drift-beds are at a considerable height, as much as 

 90 or 100 feet above the existing river, but others are at a much 

 lower level. They consist of materials assorted in much the 

 same manner as would be effected by any existing stream — of 

 gravels more or less coarse where probably the current has been 

 strong, of sand where its force has been less, and of brick-earth 

 or mud such as might be deposited by the w ateis of a flooded 

 river, or brought down the hill-sides by rain. It is impossible to 

 imagine any floods of such magnitude as to fill the valley to the 

 height of 100 feet ; but if such floods ever did occur they would 

 certainly not have deposited coarse gravel at the top of the 

 banks of the stream, but at the bottom of its bed. Nor could 

 we expect to find deposits of loam left half-way down the slopes 

 of a river liable to such floods. From these and other grounds 

 we are driven to the conclusion that the beds of drift, which are 

 now 100 feet or more above the existing river, at one time formed 

 a portion of its bed when it ran at a much higher level than at 

 present, and that, by the action of the stream running along it, 

 the valley has since that time been scooped out to its present 

 depth. The climate at the time of the deposit of the high-level 

 gravels appears to have been cold, so that both frost and a much 

 larger rainfall may have assisted the stream in producing greater 

 effects upon the valley than it now does, lhe river also, when 

 left to itself, and neither watched nor embanked, would be far 

 more liable to floods w Inch might wear away the valley. Under 

 any circumstances the scooping-out to such a depth mu-t have 

 required an enormous amount of time, and it is hard to picture 

 to one's self what the country must have been like in those days 

 when the beds of the rivers at some little distance from the sea 

 were, say, 100 feet above their present level. Here at South- 

 ampton we have beds of the-e old gravels capping the hill at the 

 Common at something like 150 feet above the sea-level, and yet 

 the top of this hill must at the tin e of their de| osit have been 

 the bottom of a valley wilh hills on either side. As old as the 

 hills i, a proverbial phrase, but, compared with the age of the 

 hills at the side of the valley which has disappeared, this hill is a 

 thing of yesterday — 



" The hills are shadows, and they flow 

 Fr.ni form to form and nothing stands, 

 they melt like mists the solid lands, 

 Like clouds they shape themselves and go." 



Some of you will begin to think that I have not kept my pro- 

 mise, but have strayed into the geological past. When, however, 

 I tell you that implements made of flint, as undoubtedly the work 

 of intelligent beings as any Sheffield whittle of the present lay, 

 form constituent parts of the gravel of which I have been 

 speaking, and are also found scattered through the sands and 

 loam, you will perceive that I am still within the limits of the 

 unwritten history of the human race. 



Before proceeding further with regard to the circumstances 

 under which the implements are found, it will be well to say a 

 few words as to their character and probable uses. Some of them 

 are large flat splinters or " flakes "of flint, detached from a block 

 by a single blow, in the same manner as flakes of flint are still 

 produced in the manufacture of gun-flints. The edges 1 f such 

 Hates are very sharp, so tbey may have been tied as knives. 

 When found in gravel they have usually been much knocked 

 al out, but when font d in sand or clay the edges often show 

 traces of wear, as if they had been u-ed for scraping bones or 

 some such hard substance as well as for cutting. The more 

 highly wrought implements are sometime^ oval, with a cutting 

 edge all round, and sometimes provided with a sharp or rounded 

 point. The oval specimen shown in the diagram was found in 

 a pit at the north end of Southampton Common, and the other 

 two near Barton, between Lymington and Christchurch. These 

 implements are chipped out with considerable skill, and may 

 have been used either as weapons for the chase or for the war, 

 or as tools for cutting, grubbing, or piercing, lhe extreme 

 point of one of the specimens figured has been worn away at 

 each side, as if it had been used for boring a hole. Some of 

 the instruments may have been mounted with hafts as- axes or 

 spears, but of this there is at present no conclusive evidence. 

 The larger number of them appear to re well-adapted for hold- 

 ing in the hand, and it is to be observed that their broad end is 

 usually blunt, and the narrow end sharpened for use ; whereas 



