English Villages by P. H. (Peter Hampson) Ditchfield
page 21 of 269 (07%)
page 21 of 269 (07%)
|
the stock-in-trade of the earliest inhabitant of our country, and are
distinguishable from those used by Neolithic man by their larger and rougher work. The maker of the old stone tools never polished his implements; nor did he fashion any of those finely wrought arrowheads and javelin points, upon which his successor prided himself. The latter discovered that the flints which were dug up were more easily fashioned into various shapes; whereas Palaeolithic man picked up the flints that lay about on the surface of the ground, and chipped them into the form of his rude tools. However, the elder man was acquainted with the use of fire, which he probably obtained by striking flints on blocks of iron pyrites. Wandering about the country in families and tribes, he contrived to exist by hunting the numerous animals that inhabited the primeval forests, and has left us his weapons and tools to tell us what kind of man he was. His implements are found in the drift gravels by the riversides; and from this cause his race are known as drift men, in order to distinguish them from the _cave men_, who seem to have belonged to a little later period. The first dwellings of man were the caves on the hillsides, before he found out the art of building pile huts. In Palaeolithic times these caves were inhabited by a rude race of feral nomads who lived by the chase, and fashioned the rude tools which we have already described. They were, however, superior to the drift men, and had some notion of art. The principal caves in the British islands containing the relics of the cave folk are the following: Perthichoaren, Denbighshire, wherein were found the remains of Platycnemic man--so named from his having sharp shin-bones; Cefn, St. Asaph; Uphill, Somerset; King's Scar and the Victoria Cave, Settle; Robin Hood's Cave and Pinhole Cave, Derbyshire; Black Rock, Caldy Island, Coygan Caves, Pembrokeshire; King Arthur's Cave, Monmouth; Durdham Downs, Bristol; and sundry others, near Oban, in |
|