Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/32

4 as we can of those who dwelt in Britain for the first two centuries afterwards. We know that they carried on a commerce and possessed a coinage, how they lived, and how they buried their dead. The tomb on the lonely moor or the swelling chalk-down, the habitation within the earthen or rock-built rampart, the camps in the best military positions commanding the pastures, the discoveries in dredging the rivers or in draining the morasses, offer the materials for bringing the life of those men before our eyes. But we can do more than this; we can indicate their advance in culture and the changes wrought in their conditions of life. We can follow them back to a time when they were on the continent, and trace their westward progress over Europe from their ancient Eastern home, from the birthplace of the nations, Asgard, the mystic Garden of Eden. We can prove that they were composed of two distinct elements, the older or the non-Aryan Iberic, and the later or the Celtic, forming the vanguard of the great army of the Aryan invaders; we know to what extent our civilisation is due to them, and how they were influenced by the civilised peoples of the Mediterranean, Phœnicians, Greeks, Etruskans, and Romans. The ancient routes of trade, leading from the Mediterranean and Black Sea northwards as far as Scandinavia and Britain, have also been traced, and we can indicate with tolerable precision what we may term the overlap of history. We are now able to realise that, while Egypt and Assyria were highly civilised and mighty empires, while the Greeks were extending their influence and power over the Mediterranean, while the Etruskans still ruled over Lombardy, and while the Phœnicians were pushing their trade farther and farther northwards along the shores of