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A SKETCH OF THE PRE-HISTORIC REMAINS OF ROMBALDS MOOR. 
BY JOHN HOLMES. 
The history of any people, place, or event is only possible when 
civilisation has so far advanced mind, as to have arrived at signs 
and sounds significant of things, and of the arts rendering such 
signs perceptible upon a definite understanding. This marvellous 
advance of civilisation may be attained by pictorial representation 
(hieroghyphics) or by abreviated symbols of such pictorial figures, or 
of memorial-knots or signs upon any materials by a rude and barbarous 
people. They may be the most advanced phonetic systems of paper 
printing or of telegraphic communication, but without some such 
arrangement, history, as we ordinarily accept it, is unknown, and in 
fact impossible. The rude, the crude, and the most perfect mode of 
representation marks the condition of advance of the arts and the 
civilisation of any people, but all history tends to indicate and take us 
back to a period when neither civilisation nor arts were in a condi- 
tion to make history. But long ere sounds were formulated into 
meanings or words, or signs into significant sounds, humanity existed, 
and men associated, lived, acted, and died. As there were men 
brave before Agememnon and wise before Ulysses, so there was 
society before history, with components doubtless relatively as 
characteristic as in the nineteenth century. 
In order to live, men are constantly acting with the materials of 
nature, and whether this be registered by history or not, the remains 
of their actions exist long after them, and probably will long after 
any special recorded history. The remains of men's actions are, 
when understood, a most accurate record of their condition, and a 
most reliable evidence of both their individual life and social arrange- 
ments. The investigation of the remains of humanity before the art 
of recording, and its correlative influences and conclusions is properly 
called pre-history, and should be the foundation of history. The 
pre-historic condition of a people not only throws light upon the 
history, but without this it is impossible to understand the relations 
