Notices of Memoirs — J. Geikie, Antiquity of Alan. 175 



II, — The Antiquity of Man in Britain.^ 



By James Geikie, F.R.S.E., F.G.S., 

 District Surveyor H.M. Geological Survey of Scotland. 



ME. GEIKIE, after some introcluctory remarks, in which he 

 dwelt pointedly upon the great advance made within recent 

 years in our knowledge of prehistoric times, went on to say that 

 what he proposed to do on that occasion was to bring before his 

 audience in a general way the evidence which had weighed with 

 archaeologists and geologists in assigning to man a much greater 

 antiquity than had at one time been allowed. Thereafter he should 

 attempt to sketch in outline certain investigations of his own, which 

 enabled him, as he thought, to give a greater precision to our views 

 of that antiquity, and this to such a degree that, with the help of 

 the astronomer and the physicist, he believed we should eventually 

 arrive at some approximate estimate of the number of years which 

 had elapsed since the earliest savage tribes of whom we had any 

 trace first occupied the caves of England. Mr. Geikie next pro- 

 ceeded to describe how archaeologists had arranged under three 

 groups all the monuments and memorials of man that belonged to 

 prehistoric times. The oldest relics were rude implements of stone ; 

 next in point of antiquity came articles of bronze, and these were 

 succeeded by relics made of iron. Hence arose the terms Stone Age, 

 Bronze Age, and Iron Age. He cautioned his hearers, however, against 

 supposing that any hard and fast line separated these three ages. 

 Each undoubtedly flowed into the one by which it was succeeded. 

 With the ages of bronze and iron the geologist had but little to do, 

 they lay chiefly within the domain of archaeology. It was quite 

 another matter, however, with the stone age, the history of which 

 could be worked out only by the geological method.' The Stone Age 

 was subdivided into two periods, termed respectively the neolithic 

 or new stone period, and the palaeolithic or old stone period. To 

 the neolithic period belonged those implements and weapons which 

 are often more or less polished and finely finished, and which, in 

 variety of form and frequent elegance of design, evince no small 

 skill on the part of the old workmen. These relics, he remarked, 

 occurred throughout the whole length and breadth of the land, from 

 the south of England to the north of Scotland, and they abounded in 

 Ireland. As a rule they were met with at or near the surface of the 

 ground, and were often associated with the remains of such animals 

 as sheep, horse, dog, pig, and certain species of oxen. The weapons 

 and tools of the palaeolithic period were of altogether ruder form and 

 finish. They were merely chipped into the requisite shape of adze, 

 hatchet, scraper, or whatever the implement might chance to be. 

 Although some dexterity was shown in the fashioning of these rude 

 implements, yet they certainly betokened much less skill than the 

 relics of the neolithic period. He remarked that an exj^erienced 



' Being the substance of a Lecture delivered on 30th January, 1873, before the 

 Birkenhead Literary and Scientific Society, Claughton Eoad, Birkenhead. 



