Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/294

266 very improbable that the Cave-men were in any way represented by the Neolithic tribes, who are the first to appear in Prehistoric Europe. The former possessed no domestic animals, just as the latter are not known to have been acquainted with any of the extinct species, with the exception of the Irish elk. The former lived as hunters, unaided by the dog, in Britain, while it was part of the continent; the latter appear as farmers and herdsmen after it became an island. Their states of culture, as we shall see presently, were wholly different. We might expect on à priori grounds that there would be an overlap, and that the former would have been absorbed into the mass of the newcomers. There is, however, no evidence of this. It seems far more probable that they were kept apart by the feelings of antipathy which we have described in the last chapter as existing between the Eskimos and the Red Indians. From the facts at present before us we may conclude that they belonged to two races of men, living in Europe in successive times, and separated from each other by an interval sufficiently great to allow of the above-mentioned changes taking place in the physical conditions of Britain.

Man, as he appears before us in the Prehistoric age, and in the Neolithic stage of culture, is far advanced in the upward path which mankind traversed in gaining the civilisation enjoyed by the higher races of the present time. His position may conveniently be ascertained by dealing first of all with his habitations.

In various parts of the country are to be seen clusters of circular depressions, very frequently within the