ordinary fractures were doubtless treated with like skill and success. In some of the incantations and charms collected by folk-lorists are lines which suggest that the early medicine-men were more than mere magicians. One, for instance, dealing with the treatment of a fracture, states:

"He put marrow to marrow; he put pith to pith; he put bone to bone; he put membrane to membrane; he put tendon to tendon; he put blood to blood; he put tallow to tallow; he put flesh to flesh; he put fat to fat; he put skin to skin; he put hair to hair; he put warm to warm; he put cool to cool."

"This," comments a medical man, "is quite a wonderful statement of the aim of modern surgical 'co-aptation', and we can hardly believe such an exact form of words imaginable without a very clear comprehension of the natural necessity of correct and precise setting."[2]

The discovery that Stone Age man was capable of becoming a skilled surgeon is sufficient in itself to make us revise our superficial notions regarding him. A new interest is certainly imparted to our examination of his flint instruments. Apparently these served him in good stead, and it must be acknowledged that, after all, a stone tool may, for some purposes, be quite as adequate as one of metal. It certainly does not follow that the man who uses a sharper instrument than did the early Briton is necessarily endowed with a sharper intellect, or that his ability as an individual artisan is greater. The Stone Age man displayed wonderful skill in chipping flint—a most difficult operation—and he shaped and polished stone axes with so marked a degree of mathematical precision that, when laid on one side, they can be spun round on a centre of gravity. His saws were small, but are still found to be quite serviceable for the purposes they were constructed for, such as the cutting of arrow shafts and bows, and the teeth are so minute and regular that it is necessary for us to use a magnifying glass in order to appreciate the workmanship. Some flint artifacts are comparable with the products of modern opticians. The flint workers must have had wonderfully keen and accurate eyesight to have produced, for instance, little "saws" with twenty-seven teeth to the inch, found even in the north of Scotland. In Ancient Egypt these "saws" were used as sickles.

Considerable groups of the Stone Age men of Britain had achieved a remarkable degree of progress. They lived in organized communities, and had evidently codes of laws and regularized habits of life. They were not entirely dependent for their food supply on the fish they caught and the animals they slew and snared. Patches of ground were tilled, and root and cereal crops cultivated with success. Corn was ground in handmills;[3] the women baked cakes of barley and wheat and rye. A rough but serviceable pottery was manufactured and used for cooking food, for storing grain, nuts, and berries, and for carrying water. Houses were constructed of wattles interwoven between wooden beams and plastered over with clay, and of turf and stones; these were no doubt thatched with heather, straw, or reeds. Only a small proportion of the inhabitants of Ancient Britain could have dwelt in caves, for the simple reason that caves were not numerous. Underground dwellings, not unlike the "dug-outs" made during the recent war, were constructed as stores for food and as winter retreats.

As flax was cultivated, there can be little doubt that comfortable under-garments were worn, if not by all, at any rate by some of the Stone Age people. Wool was also utilized, and fragments of cloth have been found on certain prehistoric sites, as well as spindle-whorls of stone, bone, and clay, wooden spindles shaped so as to serve their purpose without the aid of whorls, bone needles, and crochet or knitting-pins. Those who have assumed that the Early Britons were attired in skin garments alone, overlook the possibility that a people who could sew, spin, and weave, might also have been skilled in knitting, and that the jersey and jumper may have a respectable antiquity. The art of knitting is closely related to that of basket-making, and some would have it that many of the earliest potters plastered their clay inside baskets of reeds, and that the decorations of the early pots were suggested by the markings impressed by these. It is of interest to note in this connection that some Roman wares were called bascaudæ, or "baskets", and that the Welsh basged—basg, from which our word "basket" is derived, signify "network" and "plaiting". The decoration of some pots certainly suggests the imitation of wickerwork and knitting, but there are symbols also, and these had, no doubt, a religious significance.

It does not follow, of course, that all the Early Britons of the so-called Stone Age were in the same stage of civilization, or that they all pursued the same modes of life. There were then, as there are now, backward as well as progressive communities and individuals, and there were likewise representatives of different races—tall and short, spare and stout, dark and fair men and women, who had migrated at different periods from different areas of origin and characterization. Some peoples clung to the sea-shore, and lived mainly on deep-sea fish and shell-fish; others were forest and moorland hunters, who never ventured to sea or cultivated the soil. There is no evidence to indicate that conflicts took place between different communities. It may be that in the winter season the hunters occasionally raided the houses and barns of the agriculturists. The fact, however, that weapons were not common during the Stone Age cannot be overlooked in this connection. The military profession had not come into existence.

Certain questions, however, arise in connection with even the most backward of the Stone Age peoples. How did they reach Britain, and what attracted them from the Continent? Man did not take to the sea except under dire necessity, and it is certain that large numbers could not possibly have crossed the English Channel on logs of wood. The boatbuilder's craft and the science of navigation must have advanced considerably before large migrations across the sea could have taken place. When the agricultural mode of life was introduced, the early people obtained the seeds of wheat and barley, and, as these cultivated grasses do not grow wild in Britain, they must have been introduced either by traders or settlers.

It is quite evident that the term "Stone Age" is inadequate in so far as it applies to the habits of life pursued by the early inhabitants of our native land. Nor is it even sufficient in dealing with artifacts, for some people made more use of horn and bone than of stone, and these were represented among the early settlers in Britain.

CHAPTER II
Earliest Traces of Modern Man

The Culture Ages—Ancient Races—The Neanderthals—Crô-Magnon Man—The Evolution Theory—Palæolithic Ages—The Transition Period—Neanderthal Artifacts—Birth of Crô-Magnon Art—Occupations of Flint-yielding Stations—Ravages of Disease—Duration of Glacial and Inter-glacial Periods.

In 1865, Sir John Lubbock (afterwards Lord Avebury), writing in the Prehistoric Times, suggested that the Stone Age artifacts found in Western Europe should be classified