written record is silent. Hence we have to play the part of scientific
detectives, examine the footprints of the early man who inhabited our
island, hunt for odds and ends which he has left behind, to rake over
his kitchen middens, pick up his old tools, and even open his burial
mound.

About fifty years ago the attention of the scientific world was drawn to
the flint implements which were scattered over the surface of our fields
and in our gravel pits and mountain caves; and inquiring minds began
to speculate as to their origin. The collections made at Amiens and
Abbeville and other places began to convince men of the existence of an
unknown and unimagined race, and it gradually dawned on us that on our
moors and downs were the tombs of a race of men who fashioned their
weapons of war and implements of peace out of flint. These discoveries
have pushed back our knowledge of man to an antiquity formerly never
dreamed of, and enlarged considerably our historical horizon. So we will
endeavour to discover what kind of men they were, who roamed our fields
and woods before any historical records were written, and mark the very
considerable traces of their occupation which they have left behind.

The condition of life and the character and climate of the country were
very different in early times from what they are in the present day; and
in endeavouring to discover the kind of people who dwelt here in
prehistoric times, we must hear what the geologists have to tell us
about the physical aspect of Britain in that period. There was a time
when this country was connected with the Continent of Europe, and the
English Channel and North Sea were mere valleys with rivers running
through them fed by many streams. Where the North Sea now rolls there
was the great valley of the Rhine; and as there were no ocean-waves to
cross, animals and primitive man wandered northwards and westwards from