94 THE RUDE STONE MONUMENTS OF CORNWALL. 



found to have been the dwellings of a Neolithic people, and 

 apparently in a very simple and early stage, using only flint 

 implements and possessing no knowledge of pottery. The 

 conclusion follows that the stone circles, equally of Cornwall and 

 Devon, are older, and probably far older, than our local Bronze 

 period. What the date of the commencement of our Bronze 

 period may be, I may not now stay to enquire. I will for the 

 moment content myself by quoting what I wrote and published 

 twenty years since, and have never yet been called upon to 

 defend — namely, that the geological evidence offered by the 

 ancient stream works at Carnon and Pentuan antedates the 

 commencement of tin mining, and consequently our Bronze Age, 

 to a time when the mammoth either still existed in the West of 

 England or had not long disappeared ; and when the general 

 level of Cornwall and Devon was at least thirty feet higher than 

 now. The conditions of our raised beaches and submerged 

 forests show that the change or changes of level involved must 

 have been very slow and gradual (Sir C. Lyell's estimate of the 

 rate of crust motion was 2^ feet in a century) and we have direct 

 evidence that these changes had all ceased before the historic 

 era. The further we put back the commencement of our local 

 Bronze Age (for the Bronze Periods of different localities by no 

 means necessarily synchronise) the further back must we put 

 the greater number, if not the whole, of our stone circles ! 



This high antiquity also disproves the suggestion that they 

 can have had anything to do with the Keltic races. Indeed it is 

 quite evident, from the names the Kelts gave these monuments, 

 that they were ignorant of their origin and purpose — as ignorant 

 indeed as the Saxons who read the simple descriptive men into 

 "man," or its plural into "maidens." In this connection, too, it is 

 worthy of note that Capt. Conder was led by his explorations in 

 Heth and Moab to suggest that in the dolmens, menhirs, circles 

 and other rude stone monuments " we find the remaining works 

 of an ancient stock preceding both Aryan and Semitic races, 

 and belonging to the illiterate and consequently prehistoric ages 

 of the use of bronze and flint."* The results of the explorations 

 of the Grimspound Exploration Committee on Dartmoor have 



*Heth and Moah, p. 196, 



