PREHISTORIC EVIDENCES.* SEVERAL valuable contributions have been recently made to
our knowledge of primitive man. And it is satisfactory to know that English arcbealogists have greatly distinguished themselves in this line of research. To the works of Sir J. Lubbock, Sir C. Lyell, Mr. E. T. Stevens, and the late Mr. Henry Christy, on prehistoric times and prehistoric remains, we have now to add this erudite and masterly treatise from the pen of Mr. John Evans, the well-known authority on coins. He has gathered into a massive volume, of over 600 pages, all, or nearly all, the important facts yet ascer- tained, as to the occurrence, forms, and uses of the ancient stone implements and weapons of Great Britain. There are two special features to which the author justly refers as characterising his method of executing the task before him,—his citations of original authorities (which sometimes amount on a single page to a score) have been carefully checked, while his illustrative woodcuts have been engraved with a faithfulness and pre- cision which render them nearly as useful for purposes of study and comparison as the objects they represent. Two full indices, one general, the other topographical, further enhance the value of the work for reference, while the text is rendered more palatable to the ordinary reader by the adoption of two varieties of type,—one, large and well spaced, being used for general conclusions and more important descriptions ; the other, small and condensed, serving to present the minuter details of in- dividual finds and specimens. But we must not dwell longer upon the lesser and more mechanical merits of Mr. Evans's book, how- ever considerable the care and thought which these features may have involved. We must pass on to notice our author's treatment of a very interesting, but still obscure phase of man's life upon the earth.
Perhaps the best way of conveying to our readers some idea of Mr. Evans's book, and of the evidences of prehistoric man in Great Britain, will be to indicate in order the contents of the twenty- five chapters into which the volume before us is divided. Natu- rally enough, a few of the main facts of prehistoric archeology are affirmed and a few popular misconceptions corrected in the introductory chapter. The sequence of tools and weapons of stone, bronze, and iron is here stated, but with the necessary limita- tions. The overlapping of the stone into the later metallic ages is illustrated partly by the lingering use of stone in religious rites,
Ancient Stone Implements of Great Britain. By J. Evans. London : Longmans. 1872.
and partly by its employment amongst barbaric tribes in the present day. Nor must we forget that there are several domestic uses to which stone tools are applied in nineteenth-century Eng- land. Gun-flints are still made in this country, while hone-stones and mortars of marble have not yet been superseded. So also, in reference to the passage of the bronze into the iron age, we find that there are evidences of the contemporaneous working of both metals in prehistoric as well as in historic times. Indeed there are some purposes for which bronze is better adapted than iron, while the rarity of iron, owing to the difficulty of reducing it from its ores, would at first limit its use to a great extent. In some countries, as in Denmark, the bronze period, as it is called, appears to have been preceded by a brief copper age, before that metal was con- Vrisrted into bronze by the addition of about one-eighth part of tin, —the usual composition of most ancient bronze tools. So also it is probable that the first iron used was of meteoric, not telluric origin, just as we know was the case with several uncivilised nations of modern times. But we are told by Mr. Evans that though these early ages of man's life on the globe, the stone, the bronze, and the iron, may be likened to the three principal colours of the rainbow, yet that these overlap and shade off the one into the other. But though their succession in any one country is per- fectly well defined, still it must not be supposed that the displace- ment of stone by bronze, and of bronze by iron, took place simultaneously over any large area of country. It is only true for certain limited districts of Western Europe, and any idea of a strictly contemporaneous chronology must be regarded as untenable.
We need not dwell upon the manufacture of stone implements in prehistoric times, for the subject is very complex, and in our previous notices of Flint Chips and Gun flints in the Spectator we have said something on this point. But we may here venture to point out that the forms and uses of many ancient stone tools must have been suggested to the old workers by the very modes of fracture of the flint and other materials used. Mr. Evans perhaps does not lay sufficient stress upon this point, while another writer, Mr. H. M. Westropp,* seems to regard it as a matter for much astonishment that the flint weapons of very distant countries and very remote ages present great similarity of form. Neither Mr. Evans nor other prehistoric authorities give sufficiently detailed and accurate information as to the stones, other than flint, of which ancient implements were fashioned. " Greenstone " is a term so wide as to be almost destitute of meaning, and is frequently wrongly applied ; while often we have to be content with the mere statement that the object is made of stone. However difficult lithological or petrological studies may be, still the identification of the variety of rock or mineral used by the ancient workers in stone is not impossible, and may lead to most important conclusions as to the migration and inter- communication of ancient races.
We cannot stop to give any adequate idea of the nineteen chapters devoted by Mr. Evans to the Neolithic period. Four chapters contain an account of celts, some roughly chipped, some half chipped and half ground, and some wholly ground or polished. The mode of using and of hafting or mounting these is duly dis- cussed, while they are classified by means of data derived chiefly from a study of their forms. A front and a side view as well as a section of many important specimens being given, the reader is enabled to follow the author without difficulty. The remaining chapters on the later or Neolithic period are assigned to the following subjects, of which a bare enumeration must suffice : —Picks, chisels, gouges, axes, hammers, querns, grindstones, whetstones, flakes, cores, scrapers, drills, knives, javelin and arrow- heads, flaking tools, sling-stones and balls,—a list sufficient to show something of the resources, both domestic and military, of the later division of the Stone Age. To these we must add many objects made of bone and of born, as well as spindle-whorls, discs, cups and weights, with beads, rings, pendants, buttons, and armlets of diverse materials and forms. But though the materials of the Polished Stone Age found in Britain are varied and numerous, yet Mr. Evans confesses that he has not been able to deduce any clear history of human development during this period, nor any definite notion as to its duration, nor any conception of the interval between it and the period of palmolithic man. But it is abundantly proved that the human inhabitants of Britain had made an immense stride as to their appliances and mode of living, when we compare the works of man as he existed in the later Stone Age just passed under review with those cruder and scantier relies which we have now to consider, when man was associated in this country with a
• An English Code, its Diffieulties and the Modes of Overcoming Them; a Practical Application of the Science of Jurisprudence. By Sheldon Amos, M.A. London * Prehistoric Phases. By Hodder M. Westropp. London: Bell and Daldy. 1872. Straban and Co. 1873.
group of animals which has now for the most part disappeared either by migration or extinction.
The last four chapters are occupied by a description of the cave and river-drift implements, and by a discussion as to their antiquity. The evidence here is perfectly conclusive as to the enormous length of time daring which the human race has occupied our country. We have to add to the Historic, Bronze, and Neolithic ages, an incalculable series of years during which the sea-coast and the river-channels were greatly altered both in level and in outline, and when many animals, either utterly or locally ex- tinct, such as tile woolly rhinoceros, and the cave-lion, and cave-bear, shared with man his cave-residences. But any estimate that shall be even faintly probable of this vast lapse of time is at present un- attainable. Attempts to calculate the duration of the prehistoric ages have been made, but the data (erosion of rocks, deposition of stalagmite, elevation of the land. &c.) are far too vague and aber- rant to admit of being used for such a purpose. That the prehistoric ages were of vast duration, and that man has developed through them very slowly from the condition of an utter savage, is certain. The succession of stages in that development is well brought out in Mr. Westropp's work before alluded to, but we must remember that these stages must not be regarded as very strictly defined on the one baud, nor on the other as universally and contemporaneously prevalent. They commenced with a prolonged barbarous stage, very often, we fear, tainted with cannibalism, when man's implements were of the roughest sort, and he waged a doubtful warfare with the lion and the hymna. Next come some indications of a hunting and nomadic stage, when flint weapons began to be shaped by chipping, and the red deer, the wild boar, and wild ox were the objects of the chase. This state merges into a pastoral era, when the stone implements were either partially or wholly ground and polished, and when the remains of the sheep and the goat accom- pany human relics. Of the succeeding agricultural period, characterised by bronze tools and weapons, and by the existence of domesticated animals, it is unnecessary to speak here, as neither the bronze nor the later iron age, when cereals were grown and the idea of the State was developed, can be adequately discussed on the present occasion. Mr. Westropp's book does indeed include these subjects, but its value lies rather in the conspectus of the pre-historic ages—of which we have just given a brief out- line—and in four neatly-executed plates, in which the forms of various implements and objects of stone and bronze are repre- sented. Side by side we have the weapons and tools of distant countries and remote epochs grouped together so as to show their relationships. We can also trace out similar resemblances between the cromlechs and megalithic structures of various parts of the world. Mr. Westropp's book, however, though undoubtedly interesting, is not profound, while his style is awkward, and even ungrammatical. When he wanders into Ireland, and discourses of Irish land-tenure under the Brehon laws, he becomes rather tedious.
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