EARLY MAN
part of a horse drawn upon it with a sharp pointed tool. The bones of the animals found in the Church Hole Cave (in which 213 remains of man were found) were those of the lion, hyæna, bear, Irish elk, woolly rhinoceros and mammoth. In Northamptonshire no remains of Cave men are known. Professor Boyd Dawkins' conclusion as to the Cave man is that he is represented at the present day by the Eskimos; and speaking of the River Drift man he says: 'We cannot refer them to any of the human race now living. But they are as completely extinct among the peoples of India as among those of Europe.'[1]
The Neolithic Age
In due course of time the land sank, allowing the low-lying ground which lay on the east, south and west to become covered with seas, and what is now known as Great Britain became an island. All traces of Palæolithic man were swept away, five of the largest animals living in the previous age totally disappeared, while many others which lived during the Palæolithic age departed to other climes, some to the northern regions and some to the southern area. A different race of men now makes its appearance, who must have crossed the seas. The implements and weapons of these men, though still made of stone, show a great improvement in their construction; they are not merely chipped into the form required, as they were in the Palæolithic age, but are ground down to a cutting edge and are polished. The implements are not found in such deposits as the gravels of the old rivers; they are obtained from the various surface deposits or from burials of this age. The barrows which antiquaries agree in attributing to the Neolithic age are the long barrows, where the dead were buried in a crouching or contracted position, often accompanied by their weapons of stone. Most of the long barrows stand east and west with one end (the eastern) higher and wider than the other. Some of the long barrows had within them chambered tombs, while others were of simpler construction. Long barrows are more numerous in Wiltshire than in any other county, as many as sixty being reckoned by Dr. Thurnam; of these, eleven, all in the north of Wiltshire, are chambered. Gloucestershire is another county rich in long barrows, especially of the chambered kind.
The researches of anthropologists have shown that the Neolithic man was of small stature, averaging about 5 feet 5 inches in height; his skull was of the 'dolichocephalic' or long-headed type, with dark hair; in shape his face was oval. Skulls having these characteristics have been found in many places in England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland, 'under circumstances,' Professor Boyd Dawkins writes, 'which render it impossible to doubt that the whole of the British Isles was inhabited to the close of the Neolithic age by man in the same state of culture.' Neolithic man possessed a knowledge of agriculture (the Neolithic inhabitants of some of the earlier Swiss lake dwellings grew no less
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