It has been suggested--and with some show of reason--that the early neolithic man in Lancashire had been driven from the Yorkshire coast by the victorious invader, who came armed with a war-spear and polished stone axe.[2] Be this as it may, the evidence of such a race of men having for some time lived in parts of the county is of the most conclusive character. Although odd specimens of flint instruments have been unearthed, in various districts, it is only in the eastern portion of the county that distinct traces of a neolithic floor have been discovered--that is to say that, on removing the top soil, beneath it has been found a surface so profusely sprinkled with flint chippings and implements as to leave no room for doubt but that at some very early period there was settled upon it a race of men whose weapons of offence and defence, as well as the few instruments required for their simple personal wants, were made out of the flints collected from this drift. This neolithic floor is found on both sides of Blackstone edge, and is generally at least 1,300 feet above the sea-level, but on the Lancashire side its area is not very large, as it does not reach Burnley on the north, nor Bolton on the west. The depth of the soil or peat above this floor varies from one to ten feet. The flints consist of knives, scrapers, arrow-heads, spear-tips, and minute instruments, probably used to bore holes in bone needles; they are none of them polished or ornamented. In the parish of Rochdale alone there are twenty-five places where these implements have been found; in fact, there is scarcely a hill-top in the district where traces of them have not been unearthed. The great number of chippings met with in small areas of these high lands indicate that these are the sites of the primitive man's workshop--here he sat and laboriously fashioned the weapon or the instrument which he required. Barbed arrow-heads are extremely rare, but a beautiful specimen was lately found on Trough Edge, a hill near Rochdale.[3] These men have left no traces of their dwelling-place, and they do not appear to have made pottery; probably they lived in earth dwellings or caves in the hillsides. The single fact of their inhabiting only the high ground indicates that the fear of an enemy was ever before them, and it may well be that the foe which drove them from Yorkshire may have ultimately expelled them from their hillside settlements. At some later period the district became inhabited, though probably only sparsely, by Celtic races and people of Celtic extraction; of the latter were the numerous tribes of the Brigantes, one of which was the Setanii or Segantii (the dwellers in the water country), which is said to have been chiefly located between Morecambe Bay and the ridge of hills which divide Lancashire from Yorkshire. Another tribe also located here was the Voluntii.