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 A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE found in the same gravels as this fauna. These implements are rudely chipped into the form man required, and the age has been thereby termed the Palaeolithic age.' As has been stated, all the remains of Prehistoric men who successively inhabited this small quarter of the world prior to the Roman invasion have been arranged, classified and grouped into certain periods ; these, beginning with the oldest, are termed respectively the Palveolithic or Old Stone age, the Neolithic or New Stone age, the Bronze age and Prehistoric Iron age. In dealing with these ages or periods of primitive man one must not draw any hard and fast line between them, for they will be found to overlap ; for instance, the use of stone would be likely to continue into the Bronze age, and stone for some purposes may have been more useful than bronze ; so in the Prehistoric Iron age on the introduction of iron the use of bronze did not cease but was continued for ornamental purposes, as it was more capable of receiving ornament and decoration. The Paleolithic Age The remains of Palaeolithic men are usually grouped in two divisions, those of the River Drift man, so called because his weapons are found in the drift or gravels of the old rivers, and the Cave man, whose remains are found in the debris of caves. That we can prove the presence of Paleolithic man in this county is shown by the occurrence of several specimens of implements found in gravels of the Nene valley. There are not many, it is true, but quite sufficient to prove his appearance here, and no doubt more would turn up if diligently sought for. Sir John Evans possesses one which he himself picked up from a heap of gravel near King's Langley. The gravel, he found on inquiry, came from near Oundle ; and in 1882 a man working in a ballast pit in the parish of Fotheringhay, between Oundle and Elton stations, brought to the writer a fine implement which is also now in Sir John Evans' collection. Other specimens were found in gravels of the Nene valley by the late Dowager Marchioness of Huntley, but these came from Orton Longueville, which is on the Huntingdonshire side of the Nene. Until the discovery in 1890 of a Paleolithic implement from the valley of the Rea at Saltley near Birmingham, the Nene valley was the most northern limit which had yielded implements /// situ of this period. The remains of Cave men who belonged to a later period of the PalcBolithic age than the River Drift men are known from the deposits of certain caves, such as Kent's Caves and Brixham Cave, near Torquay, and the caves of Creswell Crags in Derbyshire, which were discovered by Prof Boyd Dawkins and the Rev. J. M. Mello in 1875. In one of these, the Robin Hood Cave, over one thousand pieces of stone and bone, showing evidence of man's handiwork, were obtained. The most remarkable relic was a smooth portion of a rib with the head and fore- 1 Yrovn falaios (iroXaios), ancient ; lithos (Xi^os), a stone. 136