Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/23

Rh the teeth of the animal on sinews, he made necklaces and other barbaric ornaments.

With the inherent instincts of an artist, he scratched a picture of his friend the mammoth on his tusk, and the reindeer on his antler, the discovery of which has shed some dim light on these early days. With no definite thought of a hereafter, he was probably indifferent to the fate of his dead. There is a scarcity of human bones belonging to this age, from which it has been inferred that either he had resort to cremation or that he presented the dead bodies of his kinsfolk to the hyenas who prowled about his cave in search of prey.

An immensity of time passed away. Structural changes passed over the land. The valleys uniting these islands with Europe became submerged. The wild North Sea swept over the dry land, across which the "grisly bear and the sabre-toothed tiger had walked after the primitive Briton," and the British Islands were completely surrounded by water.

Across the stormy seas, in primitive log canoes, came another people to possess the land. Neolithic Man, that is, the New Stone Man, or, indeed, the Iberian, was at once more civilised and interesting