Manchester Memoirs, Vol. Ixv. (1921), No. 13 11 



and Stonehenge. These have hitherto provided the most 

 serious stumbling-block to the theory. What could have 

 caused men to live there where there is no mineral wealth at 

 all ? With the experience gained in Devon and Cornwall in 

 mind, we ask, On what geological formation are they situated ? 

 The answer is provided by the map. They are all on the 

 chalk. But it is possible to go still further. For I am 

 informed by Professor D. M. S. Watson, of University 

 College, London, that they are on the Upper Chalk, the part 

 of the chalk formation that contains flints. 



Are we then to believe that the megalith builders chose to 

 live on the upper chalk because it contained flint ? There 

 is every reason to believe so. It appears that the best kind 

 of flint for the making of implements is that got from layers 

 embedded in the chalk, and not that which lies about on the 

 surface. Flint implements are found in all parts of the 

 country, even in places far away from sources of the material 

 (6, 278). Sir Jphn Evans mentions particularly Devon and 

 Cornwall as regions where there is an abundance of flint 

 implements and flakes, and these counties have no flint-bearing 

 formations, though in some places there are some on the 

 surface (6, 126 e.s.). Those would not be nearly so good for 

 the purpose as those from the chalk regions of Wilts and 

 Dorset. We have thus the remarkable fact that flint 

 implements are found all over the country, and that the 

 builders of megaliths, including long barrows, have chosen 

 out those very parts of the chalk country which produce flint. 



It is a commonplace of economics that population is 

 attracted to the centres of manufacture. The great importance 

 of flint in the days when megaliths were made would make 

 its manufacture of implements a considerable part of the 

 economic life of the people living there, temporarily or 

 permanently. The great concentration of neolithic villages, 

 long barrows and megaliths on the upper chalk, therefore, is 

 well in harmony with other facts. The flint manufacture was 

 of primary importance to the people of those days, and they 

 settled where they could get flint. How otherwise can we 

 explain the peculiar distribution of man on the Downs of the 

 South of England ? Many hundreds of square miles of 

 Downs are entirely devoid of signs of habitation in these 

 days, no traces of neolithic villages, long barrows or of 

 megaliths having been found. Yet all the natural conditions, 

 with one exception, are similar. The presence or absence of 

 flint is the only varying factor, and it is with this factor that 

 I associate the settlements. 



