THE EARLIEST PICTURE IN THE WORLD 5 



as evidence. The men had very nearly the same set of 

 domesticated animals as we have to-day, but they had no 

 skill in carving outlines of animals. Their only decorative 

 work consisted of parallel lines, straight or in zigzags or in 

 circles, graven on the great stone slabs which they erected. 

 We can trace them back to some seven thousand years 

 B.C. and then comes a huge gap — we do not know how 

 many thousand years — in our evidence as to what was 

 going on in this part of the world. We find con- 

 vincing proof that before this interval the climate was 

 much colder than it is to-day, and that the land surface 

 of Europe was in many respects very different from what 

 it became later. Britain was continuous with the 

 Continent. There were in that remote period human 

 tribes spread over the less frigid valleys of Europe. They 

 had no fields, no herds ; they fed on the roasted flesh 

 of the animals they chased and on the fish they speared, 

 and on wild fruits and roots. They dwelt chiefly, if not 

 wholly, in caves, probably also in skin tents, but they 

 did not build either in wood or in stone. The age 

 which we thus reach is called the Palaeolithic, or 

 "ancient" Stone age, because men made use of stone, 

 which they chipped into shape, but, unlike the Neo- 

 lithic people, never polished it. We find enormous 

 numbers of these rough or Palaeolithic stone imple- 

 ments both in caves and in the gravels deposited in the 

 ancient beds of rivers. They are so abundant as to 

 prove the existence of a very considerable human popula- 

 tion in the remote ages when they were fashioned and 

 used. The changes which have taken place and the time 

 involved since some of these Palaeolithic implements were 

 made and used may be guessed at (but cannot be definitely 

 calculated) from the fact that the beds of the rivers which 

 formed the gravel terraces in which they are found in 

 England were, in many cases, from one to six hundred 



