The great tombs of earth--which have their fellows not in Europe only, but over the greater part of the world--are the special and characteristic features of the stone age. The raisers of the kitchen-middens probably preceded the men who built the tombs; for their mode of life was, as we should say, the most primitive; but they were confined to a corner of Europe. The tomb-builders formed one of a mighty brotherhood of men linked together by the characteristics of a common civilization. These stone-age sepulchres, called in England tumuli, barrows, or hows, are hills of earth from one to as much as four hundred feet long, by a breadth and height of from thirty to fifty feet. They are either chambered or unchambered; that is, they are either raised over a small vault made of stone (with perhaps a sort of vestibule or entrance chamber), or else a mere hollow has been excavated within the mound. In these recesses repose the bodies of the dead, some great chieftain or hero--the father of his people, who came to be regarded after his death with almost the veneration of a god. Beside the dead were placed various implements and utensils, left there to do him honour or service, to assist him upon the journey to that undiscovered country whither he was bound; the best of sharpened knives or spear-heads, some jars of their rude pottery, once filled with food and drink, porridge, rough cakes and beer.[10] And maybe a wife or two, and some captives of the last battle were sacrificed to his shade, that he might not go quite unattended into that ‘other world.’ The last ceremony, the slaughter of human victims to the manes of the dead, was not always, but it must have been often, enacted. Out of thirty-two stone-age barrows excavated in Wiltshire, seventeen contained only one skeleton, and the rest various numbers, from two to an indefinite number; and, in one case at least, all the skulls _save one_ were found cleft as by a stone hatchet.