Older Stone Age: 1. Flint pick (Thames). 2. Bone pendant (Devon). 3. Scraper (Kent). Later Stone Age: 4. Deer antler pick (Norfolk). 5. Arrow-head (Yorkshire). 6. Flint and pyrites for striking fire (Yorkshire). 7. Celt in original haft (Solway Moss). 8. Bowl (Thames). Bronze Age: 9. Pin (Ireland). 10. Celt. 11. Drinking-cup (Berkshire). 12. Spear-head (Thames). 13. Pin (Thames). Early Iron Age: 14. Iron currency-bars. 15. Brooch (Dorset). 16. Hand comb for weaving (Hampshire).
In the course of time this race seems to have learned something in the way of cultivating the ground. The hill-tops, where they built their huts, were only suited for their cattle, and in order to find soil which they could till they had to go outside their earthwork, and some distance down the hill-slope. By their way of digging the ground, they gradually, in the course of many years, carved broad terraces, one below the other, on the hill-sides. There are some very marked traces of such terraces still to be seen near Hitchin and Luton.[2]
But Pit-dwellings were not the only habitations. There were Lake-dwellings. One was found in the year 1892, near Glastonbury, where sixty circular mounds were noted, each the remains of a Lake-dwelling, in an area of three acres. There is another at Hedsor, in Buckinghamshire; and such Lake-dwellings, of much later periods, have been found in other parts of the world, and are met with yet in some parts of South America on the big rivers there; in the Island of Borneo, in the Caroline Islands, and on the Gold Coast of Africa.
These dwelling-places of the Lake-dwellers were set up on sharpened stakes, or piles, driven into the bed of the lake or river. On these piles a platform was laid, upon which a wooden hut of wattle and daub was built, and a rough kind of bridge connected the dwelling with the shore.[3]
In the course of time—how long ago it is still quite impossible to say—a race of men, more advanced than these early Pit-dwellers, found their way to this part of the world. They were more civilized, and were Aryans; that is, they were cultivators of the soil. You may be pretty sure that fighting took place between the two races.
The newer race preferred to make their settlements near running streams. In the middle of each settlement there would be an open space, or meeting-ground, usually a small hill or a mound, round which their huts were built. Beyond this was the garden-ground, then the ground where the grain was grown, and beyond that the grazing-lands. These men began cultivating at the bottom of the hill-sides and valleys, and, as they required more ground, they would advance higher up the slopes.
Lake-dwelling
Gradually to this race came the knowledge of metals, and at that point we reach the Bronze Age. Although polished stone implements were still in use, men had begun to make spear-heads, chisels, and daggers of bronze, which is an alloy of copper and tin. What a great discovery that was, and how we should like to know how the discovery came to be made! It shows a vast advance in intelligence, power of observation, and perseverance in making experiments. This advance gradually led them on to the discovery of the tougher qualities of iron, and how to "get at it", and to make use of it. Thus we reach the Iron Age.