Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/33

] the Atlantic, the inhabitants of middle Europe were gradually passing from the Bronze stage of culture into that of Iron. The knowledge of Bronze was spreading northwards, and the lower Neolithic civilisation, characterised by the use of polished stone, and the ignorance of metals, formerly universal, was disappearing from the more remote portions of the continent.

Our inquiry into the progress of man reaches back to a time far more distant than any of these events. Before our ancestors were in Europe, and before our country was an island, there were Palæolithic tribes in Britain, ignorant of the use of polished stone and of the metals, without domestic animals, living solely by the chase, fishing, and fowling; of these, the older or the River-drift men, have left evidence that they wandered over the greater part of western and southern Europe, over North Africa, Asia Minor, and over the whole of India; while the newer, or the Cave men, have been traced over a large part of Europe. Their mode of life, and their relation to living races of men, the time of their arrival in Europe as marked in the geological record, and their surroundings, cannot fail to be of high interest to all thoughtful men.

In dealing with these difficult questions I propose to place before the reader a definite idea of the various changes which have taken place in Britain before the written record, and to make early man the central figure in the pictures of the successive changes presented by geology and prehistoric archæology. I have adopted the historical method of beginning with the earliest and working downwards with the current of events, rather than that more usually adopted of ascending the stream of time from the point of departure offered