neighbourhood of the Scamridge Dykes." The doubts as to the antiquity of
the Dykes that have been raised need scarcely any stronger refutation, if
I may venture an opinion, than that they exist in a piece of country so
thickly strewn with implements of the Stone Age. These entrenchments thus
seem to point unerringly to the warfare of the early inhabitants of
Yorkshire, and there can be little doubt that the Dykes were the scene of
great intertribal struggles if the loss of such infinite quantities of
weapons is to be adequately accounted for.

[Illustration: The Scamridge Dykes above Troutsdale.]

The size and construction of the Scamridge Dykes vary from a series of
eight or ten parallel ditches and mounds deep enough and high enough to
completely hide a man on horseback, to a single ditch and mound barely a
foot above and below the ground level. The positions of the Dykes can be
seen on the sketch map accompanying this book, but neither an examination
of the map nor of the entrenchments themselves gives much clue as to their
purpose. They do not keep always to the hill-tops and in places they
appear to run into the valleys at right angles to the chief line.
Overlooking Troutsdale, to the east of Scamridge farm, where the ground is
covered with heather the excavations seem to have retained their original
size, for at that point the parallel lines of entrenchments are deepest
and most numerous. In various places the farmers have levelled cart tracks
across the obstructions and in others they have been almost obliterated by
ploughing, but as a rule, where cultivation touches them, the trenches
have come to be boundaries for the fields.

The Neolithic people were only beginning to emerge from a state of
absolute savagery, and it is possible that even at this time they were
still cannibals. The evidence in support of this theory has been obtained