Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/310

282 crossed over into Britain from the nearest shores of the Continent, and from Britain to Ireland.

The numerous heads of javelins, arrows, and spears show that the Neolithic inhabitants of Britain and Ireland were frequently at war with one another, as is now the case with all lowly civilised tribes except the Eskimos. The club and the axe were used in hand-to-hand combat. For purposes of defence they constructed camps, with well-engineered ramparts either of stone or earth (Fig. 102), and fosses, sometimes as many as three or four ramparts being formed one above another. The ramparts probably bore palisades, and were so placed as to enable their defenders to sweep the ground within range with their sling stones and arrows. It is clear then, as General Lane Fox has pointed out, that their owners were well acquainted with the art of war.

These camps, varying in size, are exceedingly abundant, and form, even in their present ruined condition, striking pictures in the landscape; as, for instance, that of Mount Badon near Bath, Old Sarum near Salisbury, and Caer Caradoc near Church Stretton. They were probably places of refuge belonging to a tribe or clan, which afforded shelter to the flocks and herds, as well as to their possessors, during the frequent raids which are universal among lowly organised communities. They cluster more thickly on the spots which command the fertile valleys—as, for example, the sides of the Severn and of the Dee, and on the Chalk-downs overlooking the rich "bottoms" of the southern counties. Each