English Villages | Page 7

found its way to our shores, and the country was covered by a
warm ocean having islands raising their heads above the surface.
Sharks swam around, whose teeth we find now buried in beds of clay.
The land continued to rise, and attracted by the sunshine and the more
genial clime animals from the Continent wandered northwards, and
with them came man. Caves, now high amongst the hills, but then on a
level with the rivers, were his first abode, and contain many relics of
his occupancy, together with the bones of extinct animals. The land
appears to have risen, and the climate became colder. The sea worked

its relentless way through the chalk hills on the south and gradually met
the waves of the North Sea which flowed over the old Rhine valley. It
widened also the narrow strait that severed the country from Ireland,
and the outline and contour of the island began more nearly to resemble
that with which we are now familiar.
A vast period of time was necessary to accomplish all these immense
changes; and it is impossible to speculate with any degree of certainty
how long that period was, which transformed the icebound surface of
our island to a land of verdure and wild forests. We must leave such
conjectures and the more detailed accounts of the glacial and
post-glacial periods to the geologists, as our present concern is limited
to the study of the habits and condition of the men who roamed our
fields and forests in prehistoric times. Although no page of history
gives us any information concerning them, we can find out from the
relics of arms and implements which the earth has preserved for us,
what manner of men lived in the old cave dwellings, or constructed
their rude huts, and lie buried beneath the vast barrows.
The earliest race of men who inhabited our island was called the
Palaeolithic race, from the fact that they used the most ancient form of
stone implements. Traces of a still earlier race are said to have been
discovered a few years ago on the chalk plateau of the North Down,
near Sevenoaks. The flints have some slight hollows in them, as if
caused by scraping, and denote that the users must have been of a very
low condition of intelligence--able to use a tool but scarcely able to
make one. This race has been called the Eolithic; but some antiquaries
have thrown doubts upon their existence, and the discovery of these
flints is too recent to allow us to speak of them with any degree of
certainty.
[Illustration: PALAEOLITHIC IMPLEMENTS]
The traces of Palaeolithic man are very numerous, and he evidently
exercised great skill in bringing his implements to a symmetrical shape
by chipping. The use of metals for cutting purposes was entirely
unknown; and stone, wood, and bone were the only materials of which
these primitive beings availed themselves for the making of weapons or

domestic implements. Palaeolithic man lived here during that distant
period when this country was united with the Continent, and when the
huge mammoth roamed in the wild forests, and powerful and fierce
animals struggled for existence in the hills and vales of a cold and
inclement country. His weapons and tools were of the rudest
description, and made of chipped flint. Many of these have been found
in the valley gravels, which had probably been dropped from canoes
into the lakes or rivers, or washed down by floods from stations on the
shore. Eighty or ninety feet above the present level of the Thames in
the higher gravels are these relics found; and they are so abundant that
the early inhabitants who used them must have been fairly numerous.
Their shape is usually oval, and often pointed into a rude resemblance
of the shape of a spear-head. Some flint-flakes are of the knifelike
character; others resemble awls, or borers, with sharp points evidently
for making holes in skins for the purpose of constructing a garment.
Hammer-stones for crushing bones, tools with well-wrought flat edges,
scrapers, and other implements, were the stock-in-trade of the earliest
inhabitant of our country, and are distinguishable from those used by
Neolithic man by their larger and rougher work. The maker of the old
stone tools never polished his implements; nor did he fashion any of
those finely wrought arrowheads and javelin points, upon which his
successor prided himself. The latter discovered that the flints which
were dug up were more easily fashioned into various shapes; whereas
Palaeolithic man picked up the flints that lay about on the surface of the
ground, and chipped them into the form of his rude tools. However, the
elder man was acquainted with the use of fire, which he probably
obtained by striking flints on blocks of iron