Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/31

] discovered living under conditions wholly unlike those which are now experienced in this country, under a different climate and a different geography, and surrounded by wild animals, for the most part unlike any now to be found in Europe.

The continuity between geology, prehistoric archæology, and history is so direct that it is impossible to picture early man in this country without using the results of all these three sciences. The history of the earth is necessary to the history of man, if a broad view be taken instead of a narrow specialism flowing from the tendency of the age towards minuteness of detail. In the earliest records the inhabitants of this country, about two thousand years ago, are represented as being similar in their habits and modes of life to their neighbours in Gaul, and we gather from Cæsar's Commentaries and the Agricola of Tacitus that they were composed of the same Belgic, Celtic, and Iberic tribes, in the stage of culture marked by the use of iron,—foes by no means despicable to the Roman legions. The accounts, however, which have been handed down to us have been written merely from a military point of view, and from them we learn very little of the life, of the arts and habitations of the Britons of those times, and still less of the condition of the country, of the extent of forest and morass, and of the wild animals which they sheltered. On all these points modern discoveries draw aside the veil, and we can form almost as clear an idea of the inhabitants before the landing of Julius Cæsar, and of their internal and external relations,