Page:VCH Leicestershire 1.djvu/207

 EARLY MAN CONSIDERING its size, and other circumstances which one might imagine would be favourable to an early population, Leicestershire must be described as poor in the remains of the different periods into which archaeologists divide the prehistoric age. The absence of palaeolithic implements is not remarkable in a midland county, especially one which lies to the north-west of a line drawn between the Wash and the Severn, a division which, as Sir John Evans has pointed out, 1 separates with considerable accuracy the south-eastern part of England, in which remains of the palaeolithic period are found in some abundance, from the north-western part, from which they are conspicuously absent. Whether they may be discovered in the course of further search in Leicester- shire and other midland counties is a question which cannot at present be answered ; but at any rate such a discovery does not appear at all unlikely, especially in view of the fact that the bones of animals known to have been contemporary with palaeolithic man have been found in the districts referred to. As will presently be pointed out, the prehistoric antiquities found in Leicestershire comprise remains which may be referred to the Neolithic Age, the Bronze Age, and the early Iron Age, the last-named group including certain specimens which are of particular interest. If the materials for con- structing an account of prehistoric Leicestershire are somewhat scanty, they are correspondingly of greater value on account of the light they throw upon a period which otherwise would be particularly dark and uninteresting. THE NEOLITHIC AGE When we arrive at the Neolithic Age we find ourselves on sure ground. A long gap in time and great physical changes are believed to have occurred between the end of the Palaeolithic Age and the commencement of the Neolithic era ; and although there are those who hold that an intermediate or transitional stage can be recognized, yet the general consensus of opinion and the vast preponderance of evidence are both favourable to the theory of a very important gap or break in the continuity of the human population of what is now known as the British Isles. The antiquities belonging to this age found in Leicestershire are by no means numerous, but so far as they go they indicate a late rather than an early stage or period of Neolithic culture. A perforated axe made of hard sandstone, and measuring 9^ in. in length, found at Barrow-on-Soar, and a like perforated axe found in the cemetery at 1 Stone Implements.