I860.] Kett on Prehistoric Records. 239 



tive perturbation. And in the face of all this it seems to require a 

 great strain, from the effect of which the mind instantly recovers when 

 the force is removed, to think that throughout all space life can be ab- 

 solutely limited to one small globe. 



PEEHISTOEIC EECOEDS. 



By the Eev. C. W. Kett, M.A. 



Ik order to arrive at a knowledge of the condition of men in the early 

 period to which we refer under the term Prehistoric, we have two 

 sources of information — the one consisting of the relics of their 

 arms, ornaments, utensils, habitations, and burying-places, raw mate- 

 rials, manufactures, and even bones, especially skulls, found in various 

 places, in Kitchen-middens, Lake-dwellings, Burial-kists, and Barrows 

 or Tumuli ; the other being the traces in language of inventions, arts, 

 pursuits, or possessions, which a diligent comparison of connected 

 families of tongues leaves as a common residuum, and winch, added 

 to the comparison of mythology and law, go to make up the subject- 

 matter of the now extensive science of Comparative Philology. Com- 

 parative Philology and Archaeology, therefore, form the basis of the 

 following paper. 



The Prehistoric Age consisted of many periods of various, and, 

 at present, of unknown duration. The principal of these may be 

 arranged in the following manner : — The Aryan Age, when almost all 

 the nations which are now settled over the broad face of Europe, in 

 India, and through a large portion of the intervening tracts, formed 

 one family, and dwelt in one small region somewhere between the 

 Caspian Sea and the Himalayas : the Age of the Dispersion, which 

 lasted whilst the scattered tribes roamed about the world in search of 

 the habitations where they have since dwelt ; the Age of Stone, when 

 some early wanderers from the outskirts of the main portion of the 

 nation having lost in their nomad life many of the arts which they 

 possessed in the cradle-land of their race, or, more probably, some 

 distinct race pushed forward by the advancing tribes of the Aryans, 

 settled down in habitations somewhat fixed, employing the rudest and 

 roughest of all materials — stone, for the production of nearly all their 

 weapons, and even their domestic utensils ; the Age of Bronze, when 

 the metallurgic arts revived or were discovered anew, or perhaps even 

 introduced by a new race, and an era of greater elegance and refinement 

 once more broke upon the benighted intellects of the early inhabitants 

 of this and neighbouring countries ; and, lastly, the Age of Iron, which 

 runs into the period of which we have some documentary account. 



I must here guard against an ambiguity in the word age. By this 

 is scarcely intended so much a fixed period of time, as a condition 

 through which a nation has passed. Most of the nations of Europe, 

 and probably of the whole world, have traversed these five stages, 



