172 PRINCIPAL SIR WILLIAM TURNER ON 



of the geological changes in Britain, and is intimately blended with the study of the 

 earlier archaeology of our island. It is generally accepted that no satisfactory 

 evidence exists of the presence in Scotland of palaeolithic man ; even had his re- 

 mains ever been present, the ice covering, of great thickness in the glacial period, 

 by grinding the surface of the ground in its movements, must have destroyed all 

 objects lying upon it in producing the boulder clay, or till, as its ground moraine. 

 Professor James Geikie* associated the advent of man in Scotland with the closing 

 stages of the Pleistocene period, subsequent, apparently, to the disappearance of the 

 exotic mammals present in its earlier stages. Ample evidence exists to show that 

 the relative level of land and water on the coasts of Scotland had changed during 

 this period from time to time, which led to the formation of raised beaches or 

 terraces. It is doubtful if man inhabited the northern division of the island when 

 the highest or 100-feet beach was formed, which probably corresponded with the 

 Upper Forestian and Upper Turbarian epochs of the Pleistocene ; f but it can he 

 said with certainty that Scotland was inhabited when the two lower raised beaches 

 had assumed their characteristic position. 



With the disappearance of the ice sheets and the arrival of neolithic man in 

 Scotland, implements, weapons, and pottery were manufactured, ornaments were 

 worn, decorative features were devised, graves or other means of disposal of the dead 

 were constructed, in some of which the skulls and skeletons had been preserved, 

 though frequently the bones were so soft and fragile that their characters had been 

 impaired or destroyed. No traces of built dwellings which can be ascribed to the 

 people of the stone or bronze ages have been preserved, so that they probably lived 

 in caves, in rock shelters, in underground excavations, or in habitations constructed 

 of loose stones, turf, or sun-dried clay which have disappeared. Notwithstanding 

 the lapse of centuries, examples of manufactured objects and ornaments have been 

 collected and preserved in museums. They constitute the material from which 

 archaeologists have formed their opinions on the habits and mode of life of the early 

 inhabitants of our island. 



For many years the attention of Scottish archaeologists was almost exclusively 

 given to the handiwork executed by prehistoric man rather than to the osseous 

 remains of the man himself, although in the National Museum of Antiquities a small 

 collection of skulls had been formed. Sir Daniel Wilson in his well-known book t 

 had indeed described a number of crania from ancient burials, and he came to the 

 important conclusion that the successive races of prehistoric men who had occupied 

 Scotland differed in the proportions of the heads and skulls. Some years later 

 Dr Joseph Anderson in his Ehind Lectures § placed on a permanent scientific basis 



* Geikie, the Munro Lectures On the Antiquity of Man, Edinburgh, 1914. 

 t Ut supra. 



\ Archaeology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1851. 



§ Scotland in Early Christian Times, 1st and 2nd series, 1881 ; in Pagan Times, Iron Aye, 1883 ; in Bronze, and 

 Utonc Ayes, Edinburgh, 1886. 



