Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/317

] manner of the builders of the Egyptian pyramids, while the few articles placed in it with his body may perhaps measure the value placed upon him by the survivors.

The view that the tombs and their contents imply a belief in a future state is fully borne out by an appeal to almost universal habits and modes of thought, current equally among civilised and barbarous peoples. The tomb was, to the Neolithic mind, as truly the habitation of the spirits of the dead as the hut was that of the living. It was the home of the dead chieftain, and the centre into which the members of the family or clan were gradually gathered, and where they led a joyous and happy life similar to that which they enjoyed on the earth. Hence the offerings made to them, and the superstitions which have clustered round them, to be remarked among the survivals from the Neolithic age into the Historic period. The little cups, bowls, basins, and hollows on some of the slabs of the stone chambers of the tombs were probably intended to hold offerings made to the spirits of the dead, such as those on the capstone of the cromlech at Bonnington Mains, near Ratho, a few miles west of Edinburgh, on one of the props of the cromlech at L'Ancresse, Guernsey, and in many other localities.