Cities and towns -- Great Britain; Great Britain -- History, Local; Great Britain -- Social conditions; Villages -- Great Britain
1. Other remains not so ancient as these oldest stone implements, but
still very ancient, are found nearer the surface than the remains of
the River-Drift Men. They are the remains of people who, like the
Drift Men, knew nothing of metals, and used stone weapons and tools,
but better made. They had learned to shape and finish their tools by
rubbing, grinding, and polishing them, and were, evidently, a more
advanced race of men than the Cave or Drift Men.
2. For the most part we have to go to somewhat desolate parts of
England to find traces of them now. In fact, those traces would long
ago have disappeared had they not been in places which were so wild and
difficult to get at, that it was not worth any man's while to cultivate
them. The spade and the plough would very soon remove all traces of
them. In fact, the plough _has_ removed many traces of these ancient
men, and most of the specimens of their tools and weapons, which
you can see in museums, were found by men employed in ploughing and
preparing the land for crops.
3. You must not suppose that we can fix a date when these men first
appeared, as we can fix an exact date for the landing of Julius
Cæsar, or the sealing of Magna Carta. Neither can we say for how many
centuries they occupied land in what we now call Britain. It was a long
period, at any rate, and during that time their manners and their
customs changed very, very slowly.
[Illustration: Polished Implements of Flint, Stone, &c.
Polished Flint Wedge; Granite Wedge or Axe; Stone Axe; Stone Axe; Bone
Comb; Flint Arrow Heads; Harpoon Head of Flint; Saw-edged Flint Knife;
Circular-edged Flint Knife.]
4. The lowest forms of savage life seem very much alike, all the world
over. Savages are hunters, and do not as a rule cultivate the soil.
Now hunters must follow their prey from place to place, so that we
should expect these early men to have no settled homes. But even the
earliest Pit Men had advanced beyond this lowest stage, for they had
flocks and herds and dogs. No doubt they hunted as well; but they were
mainly a pastoral people, and at first did not till the soil. Races of
men who did not till the soil are called =Non-Aryan=. They chose for
their settlements the tops of hills, and avoided the narrow valleys and
low-lying lands.
5. The =Pit-Dwellers= are so called from the simple fact that they had
their homes in pits--not, however, dug anywhere and anyhow. The hole
in the ground is the simplest notion of a house. When in your summer
holiday by the sea you see the little boys and girls digging deep holes
in the sand to make "houses", they are doing in play what the early
Pit-Dwellers did in real earnest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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