The various labours of a crowd of specialists are needed to give completeness to our knowledge of primitive man, and it is scarcely necessary to say that there are a hundred questions which in such a short book as this have been left untouched. The intention has been to present those features which can best be combined to form a continuous panorama, and also to avoid, as far as possible, the subjects most under controversy. No apology surely is needed for the _conjoint_ character of the work: as in every chapter the conclusions of many different and sometimes contradictory writers had to be examined and compared, and as these chapters, few as they are, spread over various special fields of inquiry. It is to be hoped that some readers to whom pre-historic study is a new thing may be sufficiently interested in it to desire to continue their researches. For the assistance of such, lists are given, at the end, of the chief authorities consulted on the subject of each chapter, with some notes upon questions of peculiar interest. The vast extent of the field, the treasures of knowledge which have been already gathered, and the harvest which is still in the ear, impress the student more and more the deeper he advances into the study. Surely, if from some higher sphere, beings of a purely spiritual nature--nourished, that is, not by material meats and drinks, but by _ideas_--look down upon the lot of man, they must be before everything amazed at the complaints of poverty which rise up from every side. When every stone on which we tread can yield a history, to follow up which is almost the work of a lifetime; when every word we use is a thread leading back the mind through centuries of man’s life on earth; it must be confessed that, for riches of any but a material sort, for a wealth of ideas, the mind’s nourishment, there ought to be no lack. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE THE EARLIEST TRACES OF MAN (EDITOR) 1 CHAPTER II. THE SECOND STONE AGE (EDITOR) 28 CHAPTER III. THE GROWTH OF LANGUAGE (EDITOR) 55 CHAPTER IV. FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE (EDITOR) 83 CHAPTER V. THE NATIONS OF THE OLD WORLD (EDITOR) 113 CHAPTER VI. EARLY SOCIAL LIFE (H. M. KEARY) 135 CHAPTER VII. THE VILLAGE COMMUNITY (H. M. KEARY) 156 CHAPTER VIII. RELIGION (A. KEARY) 171 CHAPTER IX. ARYAN RELIGIONS (EDITOR) 197 CHAPTER X. THE OTHER WORLD (EDITOR) 236 CHAPTER XI. MYTHOLOGIES AND FOLK-TALES (EDITOR) 254 CHAPTER XII.