^ 
PREFACE 
Fully fifty years ago — in 1863, to be quite exact — Sir 
Charles Lyell told the story of the antiquity of man 
from a geologist's point of view. His book ^ became a 
classic ; the geologist came to be regarded as the official 
historian of ancient man. The modern successors of Sir 
Charles Lyell have maintained the position he established 
for them. In the books of Professor Boyd Dawkins,^ of 
Professor W. J. Sollas,^ of Dr G. Frederick Wright,* and 
of Professor James Geikie,^ the world of our remote 
ancestors is made to live again. The antiquity of man, 
from a geologist's point of view, has thus been placed 
clearly and fully before the English reading public. In 
1865, Lord Avebury — Sir John Lubbock he was then — 
approached the problem of man's antiquity from another 
point of view. He was primarily interested in the 
culture, the industry, the civilisation of ancient man ; the 
geological details of the prehistoric landscape took a 
secondary place in his pictures of prehistoric times.*' He 
sought to follow the human army to its beginning in 
the remote past by tracing the possessions it had discarded 
1 The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man. London, 1863 
(ist edition). 
'- Cave Hunting, 1874. Early Man in Britain, 1880. 
3 Ancient Hunters, 191 1. 
•* The Origin and Antiquity of Man., 1913. 
° The Antiquity of Man in Europe, \()\\. 
" Prehistoric Times, Williams & Norgate, 7ih edition, 1913. 
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