VI INTRODUCTION. 



The earliest inhabitants of the West of Europe, inchisive 

 of Great Britain, of Avliom we have any knowledge whatever, 

 appear to have been those who lived contemporaneously Avith 

 the extinct Mammals, and at the time when Great Britain 

 formed a part of the continent of Europe. The only remams 

 of these people in Britain, it is believed, are bones and flint 

 and other stone implements. 



Some of the latter are coarsely worked, rough and rude, 

 whilst others are more elaborately and even delicately worked 

 or polished. 



This difference in the state of the tools has led to the 

 conclusion that they must have belonged to two different 

 and successive races of men, which have consequently been 

 denominated Palaeolithic and Neolithic races. 



Who were these prehistoric people ? Were the former of 

 the ancestral stock of the Esquimo, and the latter the fore- 

 fathers of the Finns, or the Ugrii or Ogres ? 



Or were the Neolithic the descendants of the Palseolithic 

 men ? What is the relationship, if any, of these two races, 

 especially of the former, to those who raised the two varieties 

 of sepulchral mounds or barrows found in England ? As a 

 rule the human crania found in the long barrows are long 

 or dolichocephalic, whilst those exhumed from the round 

 barrows are short, or brachycephalic, and the former are 

 judged to be more ancient than the latter. 



Were the long-barrow men descendants of the Neolithic, 

 or of some other race ? 



