[CHAPTER IV]
The Early Inhabitants of the Forest and Vale of Pickering
Almighty wisdom made the land
Subject to man's disturbing hand,
And left it all for him to fill
With marks of his ambitious will....
Urgent and masterful ashore,
Man dreams and plans,
And more and more,
As ages slip away, Earth shows
How need by satisfaction grows,
And more and more its patient face
Mirrors the driving human race.
Edward Sandford Martin.
THE NEOLITHIC OR NEW STONE AGE
Succeeded the Old Stone Age and overlapped the Bronze Age.
THE BRONZE AGE
Succeeded the New Stone Age and overlapped the Early Iron Age.
THE EARLY IRON AGE
Succeeded the Bronze Age and continued in Britain until the Roman Invasion in B.C. 54.
(All these periods overlapped.)
The Palæolithic men had reached England when it was part of the continent of Europe, but after the lesser Glacial Period had driven the hairy savages southwards a slow earth movement produced what is now the English Channel and Britain was isolated. Gradually the cold relaxed and vegetation once more became luxuriant, great forests appeared and England was again joined to the continent. Possibly the more genial climate which began to prevail in this country and the northward movement of the reindeer brought the first Neolithic men into England, and it has been suggested that some of these earlier tribes whose implements have been discovered in White Park Bay, County Antrim and the MacArthur Cave, near Oban, form a link between the Palæolithic and Neolithic people.
The culture of the New Stone Age was a huge advance upon that of the earlier races, although it is more than probable that the higher development existed in different parts of the world simultaneously with the lower, the more primitive people becoming influenced by the more advanced. A wave of great progress came with the Iberians of Spain who spread across France and reached Britain by means of boats at a time when it was probably once more an island.