Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/311

] group of hills, writes General Lane Fox, in the South Downs, had a stronghold of its own, intended "to contain the inhabitants of the surrounding district, who dwelt in the valleys beneath, where fuel and water were obtainable, and where traces of their cultivation still exist, and who, like the savages of Africa and many other parts of the world, resorted to their strongholds in times of danger, each man carrying with him fuel, water, and provisions sufficient to sustain him until the foe retired."

The abundance of these camps gives us a clue to the social condition of the country at the time. The population was large, but it was split up into small tribal communities normally at war with each other, like the Afghans, the Kaffirs, or the villagers encountered by Mr. Stanley in his voyage down the Congo, each ready either to defend itself or to take the opportunity of attacking any of its neighbours. There was probably no strong central military power; but each tribe obeyed its own chief, whose dominion was limited to the pastures and cultivated lands protected by his fort, and extended but a little way into the depths of the forest, which were the hunting-grounds common to him and his neighbours. There must have been social differences resulting from the possession of property, principally in the shape of flocks and herds; and the variation in size and in the contents of the burial-places shows that it was unequally distributed.