Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/724

702 "Eolithic" and "Mesolithic" in order to distinguish two phases in the Stone Period as being both unfounded and misleading. We know not where or when the dawn of human civilization arose, but it was probably long before the date of our earliest River-Gravels and in some part of the world more favoured by climate than Britain. Why then should we speak of British implements as Eolithic? And how can we apply the term Mesolithic to a period intervening between the Palæolithic and Neolithic Ages, when we know neither when the one ended nor when the other began?

Enough has now been said with regard to the manner in which these beds of River-drift were probably deposited; and the irresistible conclusion is, that, owing to the wasting agency of rain, frost, and rivers, there must have been a vast change in the superficial features of the country, since the time when those who fashioned the flint implements found in the high-level gravels were joint occupants of the land with the mammoth and rhinoceros and the other departed members of the Quaternary fauna. A similar change in the surface of the country has also taken place in the neighbourhood of the caves in which the remains of this same fauna occur, associated also with similar relics of human workmanship.

What length of time it must have taken for such changes to be effected, is a question we must now approach; but before doing so it will be well to say a few more words, in addition to what has already been said, on the almost entire absence of human bones in the beds containing those of the associated mammalia.

In the first place, it is well to repeat that whatever may be the case in the brick-earth, or loess, there have not, as has been pointed out by Sir John Lubbock, been found in the gravel up to the present time any remains of animals so small as man, who, as the same author observes, must of necessity have been few in number in comparison with the animals by the chase of which he must have subsisted. Another cause appears also to have been at work; for however barbarous we may suppose the human race to have been at that remote period, we can hardly believe them to have been so destitute of all natural affection as to deny some rites of sepulture to friends or relatives removed by death. There would, therefore, in all probability, be but few or no human bones exposed on the surface in such a manner as to be carried off by the flooded streams, and imbedded in their gravels; while, in case of any human beings perishing by drowning, their bodies, as I have