122 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



Second : The carriage of the material or implement must have 

 been performed by human agency. The undisturbed character of 

 the deposit in many places being such as to exclude any theory of 

 the carriage being effected by floods or other geological changes. 



Many of the articles belonging to prehistoric man are placed in 

 such positions that no theory of their having been so placed by 

 geological changes, either in the shape of floods, or otherwise, is 

 tenable. It is quite true that many of the articles found are of such 

 an imperishable nature that they would admit of being rolled about 

 or carried along with other debris by rivers overflowing, or by the 

 articles themselves being dropped by some prehistoric hunter or 

 fisher into the water. Yet we find that most of the discoveries have 

 been made in such positions as to preclude this view. 



Amongst the Palgeolithic men when the weapons of war and 

 implements of all sorts consisted simply of chips or flakes of flint, no 

 doubt very little care would be taken of them. These flint flakes 

 were in most instances so easily obtained, and of so little value, that 

 the Palaeolithic hunter or warrior would not consider them worth 

 the trouble of carrying any great distance, but would throw them 

 down wherever used, and depend upon obtaining another knife or 

 axe when he next needed its use. It would be different with the 

 Neolithic men. Their implements were highly finished, often elab- 

 orately decorated with carvings, and required a long time, and great 

 expenditure of labor to produce. Neolithic man would therefore be 

 more careful in the use of these articles, hence it is we find more of 

 the productions of the polished, than of the rough stone period, and 

 they are always found in positions which show that they were placed 

 there with great care. It is to this carefulness of the Neolithic 

 man that we owe most of our knowledge of his mode of living and 

 his commercial relations. 



It is in prehistoric burying grounds, in the Barrows, Dolmens, 

 and Tumuli, we find the most complete records of ancient man's 

 manner of living, and in them have been found many evidences of 

 commercial relations having existed between the different tribes at 

 the period the grave was made. To the almost universal custom 

 existing among the prehistoric tribes, of burying with the dead, his 

 arms, ornaments, and every article he had valued during life, 

 archaeologists are indebted for much of the information they now 



