4 SECRETS OF EARTH AND SEA 



imaginary man and represent him as taking a coloured 



photograph of the Druids of Stonehenge on a piece of 



Egyptian papyrus. Here is Mr. Kipling's vision of 



primitive man : 



Once on -a. glittering icefield, ages and ages ago, 

 Ung, a maker of pictures, fashioned an image of snow. 

 Later he pictured an aurochs, later he pictured a bear — 

 Pictured the sabre-tooth tiger dragging a man to his lair — 

 Pictured the mountainous mammoth, hairy, . abhorrent, alone — 

 Out of. the love that he bore them, scribing them clearly on bone, 

 Straight on the glittering icefield, by the caves of the lost Dordogne, 

 Ung, a makcE of pictures, fell to his scribing on bone. 



The fact is that several prehistoric races have succeeded 

 one another in Western Europe during the immensely 

 long period — amounting to hundreds of thousands of 

 years — during which man existed before the dawn of 

 history. The " lost " or " prehistoric Dordogne " was like 

 the present historic Dordogne in regard to the fact that 

 many races and dynasties successively held possession of 

 it and left their work in its soil and caves. 



Passing back through the historic age of iron and the 

 sub-historic age of bronze, we come to a time, about four 

 thousand years ago, when there were no men in the west 

 of Europe who made use of metals at all, although, for a 

 thousand or two years earlier, men were using bronze and 

 copper in the East. European races immediately before 

 the first use of metals made beautiful implements of 

 stone (chiefly flint), and finished them by grinding and 

 polishing them. These men are spoken of as Neolithic 

 men, or men of the Neolithic period. They had herds 

 and cultivated crops, and they built after a fashion rough 

 houses in wood and tombs and temples with great slabs of 

 stone. They made pottery and woven cloth. The animals 

 and plants of Europe were the same in those late pre- 

 historic times as they are to-day. The Lake dwellings of 

 Switzerland belong to this epoch and yield us their remains 



