William Boyd Dawkins

“ For purposes of geological classification over wide areas an appeal to the purely local phenomena of glacier or iceberg is useless, because they tell us nothing as to the contemporary fauna and flora, by which alone all geological periods have hitherto been determined. I am unable, therefore, to agree with Dr. James Geikie in treating the Pleistocene period as the equivalent of "the Ice age." It is foreign to the plan of this work to discuss the much debated cause of the Glacial period, as the lowering of the temperature in the Pleistocene age is frequently termed. ”

“ If we could in imagination take our stand on the summit of a hill commanding an extensive view, in almost any part of Great Britain or Ireland in the Neolithic period, we should look upon a landscape somewhat of this kind. Thin lines of smoke rising from among the trees of the dense virgin forest at our feet would mark the position of the Neolithic homesteads, and of the neighbouring stockaded camp which afforded refuge in time of need ”

“ Under favourable conditions of life there is every reason to believe that it would in like manner have become wild in Europe. The enormous abundance of its remains in the Neolithic pile-dwellings, coupled with the pig-sties, and stores of acorns and beech-nuts found at Robenhausen, where no other breed of swine has been discovered, seem to me good evidence that it was introduced into Europe as a domestic animal. ”

“ In the course of time the knowledge of bronze was spread through the continent, and the great superiority of the civilisation, of which it is the emblem, led to the invasion of Britain. Bronze weapons ensured victory over enemies armed with the old weapons of stone, and consequently the introduction of the new material must necessarily have led to frequent wars. The knowledge of bronze must have affected the warfare of the time in the same way as the introduction of gunpowder affected the warfare of the Middle Ages. ”

“ We have now arrived at the point in the inquiry into the condition of early man which is marked by the dawn of agriculture, by the arrival of domestic animals, and the invention of many useful arts; at that fountain-head whence the civilisation of Europe, such as we know it now, was derived. From this time forward to the borders of history we have to record the advance of man in culture and his passage from the condition of the farmer and herdsman to that of the merchant and manufacturer. ”

“ The River-drift man first comes before us, endowed with all human attributes, and without any signs of a closer alliance with the lower animals than is presented by the savages of to-day; as a hunter, armed with rude stone implements, living not merely in Britain but throughout western and southern Europe, northern Africa, Asia Minor, and India. ”

“ Thus, in this district, close to the centre of the dominion of ancient Etruria, we have the two metals side by side, which enabled the Etruskans to become the famous bronze merchants and metal-workers which they were at the dawn of history in Italy. There is no longer any reason for supposing that the civilised Mediterranean peoples were dependent on the mines of Spain and Britain for a supply of bronze. ”

“ From the facts mentioned in the last two chapters, it will be seen that the continuity between the Neolithic age and the present day has been unbroken. It is marked not merely by the physique of the present Europeans, by many of the domestic animals and cultivated seeds and fruits, and many of the arts, but by the testimony of language, and it is emphasised by the survival of the Neolithic faith in the shape of widely-spread superstitions. In every respect the Neolithic immigrant into Europe was immeasurably superior to the Palæolithic man of the caverns. ”

“ Instead of the wanderer dependent on the chase, we have to deal with the dweller in fixed habitations, and with those social conditions which follow from men being massed together in various centres for the common good. We have to chronicle in the Prehistoric period the changes wrought in Europe by the invasion of new peoples, and the appearance of new civilisations—changes similar to those which are now rapidly causing the hunters of the bison in the far west to disappear before the advance of the English colonist. ”

“ New conditions of life were produced by these changes, so unfavourable for the Secondary animals, that all the higher forms perished that were unable to compete in the struggle for life with the new invaders, whose presence marks the Eocene period. The invasion of Europe by the placental mammals is the great event which is the natural starting-point for our enquiry into the ancient history of man, since the conditions by which he was surrounded on his arrival in Europe, form part of a continuous sequence of changes, from that remote period down to the present day. ”

“ It is not likely that so large an animal could have survived in Britain into the Historic period in a wild state, because its creamy- white colour would make it conspicuous to its enemies, and render concealment impossible in so densely-populated an island as Britain. These large cattle are distributed throughout every part of Britain conquered by the English, while the Celtic short-horn only survives in those parts in which the British had taken refuge. ”

“ He will also have realised that, in the European part of this vast forest-covered continent, there was not one living species of mammal to be seen in the strange and varied fauna to herald the order of things that was to be, although there were many familiar trees and some reptiles, such as the alligator and crocodile. When all this is taken into account, it will be seen how improbable, nay, how impossible, it is that man, as we know him now, the highest and most specialised of all created forms, should have had a place in the Meiocene world. ”

“ The great mineral riches and natural fertility of the country caused a trade to spring up, and, as in the case of most of our colonies, the trade was rapidly followed by supremacy, which, if the Romans had been conquered, would have turned the Iberian peninsula into a Carthaginian province, and might have resulted in Carthage becoming the mistress of the world. The silver enabled them to make that metal a standard of value, and thus gave enormous facilities for traffic, while the tin and the copper gave them the materials for making bronze, used so largely in the Mediterranean trade. ”

“ It is difficult to over-estimate the work done by the axe in advancing civilisation. The stone axes, easily blunted and broken, could have made but little impression on the vast forests of pine, oak, and beech, covering the greater part of Britain and the Continent in the Neolithic age. Clearings necessary for pasture and agriculture must unquestionably, then, have been produced principally by the aid of fire. Under the edge of the bronze axe, clearings would be rapidly produced, pasture and arable land would begin to spread over the surface of the country. ”

“ It is remarkable that the seeds of the wild plants found in the lake-dwellings are absolutely identical with those of the present time; while the seeds of the plants under cultivation have been improved by the care of man in the many centuries which separate the Neolithic age from our own times.
It is therefore evident that in the fields, gardens, and orchards the pile-dwellers possessed vegetables not traceable to wild stocks now growing in Switzerland; and it is certain, from the researches of Professor Heer, that the foreign stocks have been derived from Southern Europe or from Asia Minor. ”

“ They prove that the earth as a whole has passed through a series of biological changes, analogous to those which are to be seen in the animal world in the passage from birth to old age. They may be accounted for on the theory of evolution of Herbert Spencer and Darwin, that while the conditions of life were ever changing, those animals and plants which were not sufficiently plastic to conform to a new state of things died out, while those which were more capable of modification, so as to be in harmony with their surroundings, became what we know as new species, genera, families, orders. ”

“ It is very probable that the oldest tin mines worked in Europe are those of Tuscany. Then the natural progress of discovery would lead the Phœnicians to the exploration of the tin mines of the Eldorado of the West—the Iberian peninsula. And next, as the adventurous sailors penetrated farther to the north, along the shores of the ocean, the mines of Brittany and Cornwall would be opened up. Those of Saxony and Bohemia and of central France were probably developed, the one by the energy of the Etruskan merchants, and the other by the merchants of Massilia, or of the Phœnician Heraklea ”

“ The extent to which the Etruskans are indebted to Egyptian art is only to be realised by an examination of their tombs and of the various Italian museums. The discoveries at Cyprus and Mykene, and elsewhere in Greece, show that the influence of Egypt was directly felt among the ancient inhabitants of the Peloponnese, and the islands of the Archipelago, as was the universal opinion of the early writers of Greece and Rome. It may therefore be said to have pervaded the whole of the Mediterranean area in the fifteenth century B.C., and for how long a time before we have as yet no evidence. ”

“ The continuity between geology, prehistoric archæology, and history is so direct that it is impossible to picture early man in this country without using the results of all these three sciences. The history of the earth is necessary to the history of man, if a broad view be taken instead of a narrow specialism flowing from the tendency of the age towards minuteness of detail. ”

“ Secular changes of climate in the Pleistocene age are clearly marked in Britain north of a line connecting the Bristol Channel with the valley of the lower Thames, and passing due eastward into Germany and Russia, by the traces of glaciation, by the erratics, or blocks of stone transported far away from the rocks from which they were torn, and by the accumulations of clay and sand known as the glacial [15] drift. They imply the following series of climatal and geograpliical changes, affecting the area of Britain north of the above line, those which are purely local being omitted. ”

“ Very frequently it is found along with gold in the stream-works, and to this association is probably due its early discovery by man. Gold, from its brilliant colour and indestructibility, must have been the first metal to catch the eye of man, and when it was once sought by the simple process of washing, the heavy tin-stone would be left behind along with it. In the course of time the true nature of tin-stone was probably revealed by accident, and before the eye of the astonished beholder the dull stone flung into the fire became trans- figured into the glittering metal. ”

“ It must be observed that woollen fabrics can be preserved only under very rare circumstances. They are completely destroyed by fire, and they rapidly decay in water; and it is only under those imperfectly known and exceptional conditions in which the body is turned into adipocere, and the bones into phosphate of iron, from the percolation of water charged with salts of iron, that they withstand decay. It does not therefore follow that the manufacture of woollens was not commonly carried on in Europe in the Bronze age, because the cloth has been so rarely discovered. ”

“ The Prehistoric period covers all the events which took place between the Pleistocene age on the one hand and the beginning of history on the other. To it belong most of the alluvia and the peat-bogs, as well as the contents of certain caverns characterised by the presence of the wild mammalia now living in Europe, and of the wild or half-wild animals which had escaped from their servitude to man. One species only of all the mammals then alive, the Irish elk, has since become extinct. ”

“ From the facts at present before us we may conclude that they belonged to two races of men, living in Europe in successive times, and separated from each other by an interval sufficiently great to allow of the above-mentioned changes taking place in the physical conditions of Britain.
Man, as he appears before us in the Prehistoric age, and in the Neolithic stage of culture, is far advanced in the upward path which mankind traversed in gaining the civilisation enjoyed by the higher races of the present time. ”

“ The appearance of a definite compound such as bronze implies that it has been introduced into Europe from some other area, in which we may suppose that the ingenuity of man was at work for a long period in finding out, by continual experiments, the properties both of copper and of tin, ultimately combining them together in the proportions which are so generally observed in the implements and weapons of the Bronze age. ”

“ As decreasing temperature drove the tropical forms south, the more northern must have pressed closely upon them. The northern Eocene, or the temperate floras of that period, must have pushed from their homes in the far north more and more south as climates chilled, and at last, in the Meiocene time, occupied our latitudes. The relative preponderance of these elements, I believe, will assist in determining the age of Tertiary deposits in Europe, more than any minute comparisons of species. Thus it is useless to seek in the Arctic regions for Eocene floras, as we know them in our latitudes ”