xxiv
Journal of Proceedings.
period the whole of the human inhabitants of Europe were using stone
exclusively, at another period nothing but bronze, and at another period
only iron. As pointed out by Sir John Lubbock, these ages no doubt
overlapped, and stone might have been in use in one country at a period
when bronze had found its way into a neighbouring country. The
remains found in the peat-bogs simply indicated three successive stages
of civilisation in one district, but there was no reason whatever for
believing that each stage was absolutely contemporaneous with a
corresponding stage throughout the whole of Europe. Then there was
evidence of another kind furnished by the well-known refuse-heaps or
"kitchen-middens" found on the shores of the Baltic, consisting of great
mounds of shells which appear to have been cast away as refuse by the
people of the Stone Age. In these heaps were found none but stone
implements ; they belonged without doubt to the Stone Age, and no
metallic weapon of any kind had ever been found in them. Facts of this
sort of course went to show that the use of stone preceded that of metal,
which required greater skill and knowledge in order to work it, and they
further went to support the view that our ancestors were of a more
barbarous type than their successors, and not, as is often stated, that man
has been degraded from a more civilised state.
The Stone Age had been divided into two periods, the Neolithic or
Newer Stone Age, and the Palaeolithic or Old Stone Age. The first
evidence of man's advent upon the earth, as afforded by these worked
flints, according to the generally-received opinion, showed that he
appeared about the time of the last glacial epoch which came on at the
close of the great Tertiary Period of geologists. Of late years some
authorities had stated that worked flints had been found in strata of
inter-glacial or possibly of even pre-glacial age. The evidence had been
much disputed, but he (the President) was glad to see that Prof. Ramsay,
the Director-General of the Geological Survey, in the last edition of his
' Physical Geology and Geography of Great Britain,' had unhesitatingly
accepted Mr. S. B. Skertchley's statement that he had found flint
implements in brick-earth beneath the Chalky Boulder-Clay near Brandon,
in Suffolk. So far as he himself was concerned, the President saw no
a priori reason for refusing to accept the evidence of man's enormous
antiquity—an antiquity which might extend back to pre-glacial times and
even as far back as the Miocene Period. The implements of the Old
Stone Age were of a much ruder type than those of the Neolithic Period,
but that they were both of human workmanship would not for a moment
be doubted by anyone who would examine them fairly and intelligently.
Palaeolithic implements were found in association with animals now
extinct, and their enormous antiquity was further proved by the great
elevations at which the flints were sometimes found above the existing
rivers. By means of diagrams drawn on the black-board, Mr. Meldola
then showed the manner in which valleys were hollowed-out by river-
action, deposits of alluvium and gravel being left at different elevations