EEVIEWS. 
181 
summary of tliis part of the volume. It is a somewhat difficult matter to 
convince a person fresh to the subject that man has existed upon the earth 
for hundreds of thousands of years before the Christian era ; but we think 
Sir John Lubbock has grappled with his task in a more than ordinarily 
satisfactory manner. Adopting the more generally received opinion, he 
considers that from the time when man first appeared on the globe up to the 
Historic period, the human race has passed through four distinct phases, 
which are associated by Archaeologists with as many separate epochs. Thus 
we have (Ij the Palaeolithic or First Stone Age ; (2) the Neolithic or Second 
Stone Age ; (3) the Bronze Age ; and (4) the Iron Age. The savages of 
Palaeolithic times seem to have been characterised by a barbarism of the 
most primitive type. The relics they have left us on which to found their 
history are found in beds of gravel or loam, technically styled loess^ which 
extend along our valleys, and occasionally reach a height of 200 feet above 
the present water-level. These beds were deposited by the rivers which now 
flow through Europe, and which ran then in the same direction as now, and 
drained the same areas as they do in our days. Hence the contour of 
Europe must have been very much what it is at present. The fauna, how- 
ever, was of a very different type from the present one, and comprised among 
other animals the mammoth, the woolly-haired rhinoceros, the hippo- 
potamus, urus, musk-ox, reindeer, &c. It would appear, too, that the 
climate was extremely cold. 
All the remnants left us of the men of those times are a number of rude 
unpolished implements of stone ; no traces of pottery or metals have been dis- 
covered. The people who characterised the Neolithic Age seem to have ad- 
vanced in civilisation over their predecessors, as they were also less remote 
chronologically. Their remains are never found in the drift-gravels ] but are 
to be met with in those curious shell-heaps known as Kjokkennoddings, and 
in the ancient lake- dwellings or Pfahlbaiiten of Switzerland. It is another 
mark of this age that its relics are not associated with the remains of the Mam- 
moth. They also used weapons of stone, but their handiwork, if so it may be 
termed, is manifestly an improvement on that of the preceding epoch. The 
implements they have left us are of stone, but polished, and not rudely 
hacked out ” of the block, like the Palaeolithic weapons. A further advance 
is shown in the remains of hand-made pottery of a rude description, in the 
existence of cultivated cereals, of fabrics of woven flax, and of the bones of 
domestic animals, such as the ox, sheep, goat, pig, and dog. The Neolithic 
period was followed by an age in which bronze was extensively employed 
for weapons of warfare and the chase. Some of the bronze axes are exact 
copies of the rude stone ones, but others show very distinct ornamentation 
of a particular character. Gold, amber, glass, silver, lead, and zinc, were in 
use, and some coins also have been discovered ; writing, however, appears to 
have been unknown. The age of iron was the last phase presented by 
primitive man, prior to the Christian epoch. The relics of the “ iron men ” 
are found in large numbers in the lake-village of La Tene, in the Lake of 
Neufchatel, and also in the Nydam ‘^find” in Denmark. In these remnants 
scarcely any flint implements are seen, and only few bronze ones, while the 
number and quality of the iron implements indicate a very decided improve- 
ment in civilisation, and a dawning conception of the art of ornamentation. 
