We now purpose to review the growth of archæology in contact with geology, where it concerns man as the last of the links of life on the globe; and then to notice the archæology of each country in turn, as it leads on to the times of historical record, and so passes down to modern times.
A century ago the world of thought was divided between the old and new ideas very differently from what is now the case. Then there stood on one side the idea of a special creation of an individual man, at 4000 B. C.; the compression of all human history into a prehistoric age of about three thousand years, and a fairly logical solution of most of the difficulties of understanding in a comfortable teleology. On the other hand stood many who felt the inherent improbability of such solutions of the problem of life, and who were feeling their way to some more workable theory on the basis of Laplace, Lamarck, Erasmus Darwin, and others; vaguely mingling together questions of physics, geology, archæology, anthropology, and theology, each of which we now see must be treated on its own basis, and be decided on internal evidence, before we can venture to let it affect our judgment on other points.
The great new force which thrust itself in to divide and decide on these questions is the scientific study of man and his works. Strangely shaped flints had been noticed, but no one had any knowledge of their age. One such, when found with the bones of a mammoth, was attributed to the Roman age, because no person could have brought elephants into Britain except some Roman general. The argument was excellent and irrefutable until geology found plenty more remains of the mammoth and showed that it was here long before the Romans. It was less than half a century ago that our eyes began to open to the abundant remains of flint-using man. Then a single rude stone weapon was an unexplained curiosity; now an active collector will put together his tens of thousands of specimens, will know exactly where they were found, their relation of age and of purpose, and their bearing on the history of man.
Not only have worked flint implements been found in the river gravels of France and England, where they were first noticed in the middle of this century, but also in most parts of Europe, in Egypt on the high desert, in Somaliland, at the Cape of Good Hope, in India, America, and other countries; and the most striking feature is the exact similarity in form wherever they have been found. So precisely do the same types recur, so impossible would it be to say from its form whether a flint had been found in Europe, Asia, or Africa, that it appears as if the art of working had spread from some single centre over the rest of the world. This is especially the case with the river-gravel flints—the earlier class—usually called Paleolithic. Soon after the general division had been made between polished stone-work of the later or Neolithic times, found on the surface, and the rough chipped work of the earlier or Paleolithic times, found in geological deposits, a further sub-division was made by separating the Paleolithic age into that of the river gravels and that of the cave-dwellers. The latter has again been divided into three classes by French writers, named, from their localities, Mousterien, Solutrien, Magdalenien; and, though these classes may be much influenced by locality, they probably have some difference of age between them.
And now within the last few years a still earlier kind of workmanship has been recognized in flints found in England on the high hills in Kent. Though at first much disputed, the human origin of the forms is now generally acknowledged, and they show a far ruder ability than even the most massive of the Paleolithic forms. The position also of these flints, in river deposits lying on the highest hills some six hundred feet above the present rivers, shows that the whole of the valleys has been excavated since they were deposited, and implies a far greater age than any of the gravel beds of the Paleolithic ages.
We, therefore, have passed now at the beginning of this century to a far wider view of man’s history, and classify his earlier ages in Europe thus:
First—Eolithic: Rudest massive flints from deposits 600 feet up.
Second—Paleolithic: Massive flints from gravels 200 feet up and less (Achuleen).
Third—Paleolithic—Cave-dwellers: Flints like the preceding and flakes (Mousterien).
Fourth—Paleolithic—Cave-dwellers: Flints well worked and finely shaped (Solutrien).
Fifth—Paleolithic—Cave-dwellers: Abundant bone working and drawing (Magdalenien).
Sixth—Neolithic: Polished flint working, pastoral and agricultural man.
What time these periods cover nothing yet proves. The date of 4000 B. C. for man’s appearance, with which belief the nineteenth century started, has been pushed back by one discovery after another. Estimates of from 10,000 to 200,000 years have been given from various possible clews. In Egypt an exposure of 7000 years or more only gives a faint brown tint to flints lying side by side with Paleolithic flints that are black with age. I incline to think that 100,000 years B. C. for the rise of the second class, and 10,000 B. C. for the rise of the sixth class will be a moderate estimate.
Passing now from Paleolithic man of the latest geological times whose works lie under the deposit of ages, to Neolithic man of surface history whose polished stone tools lie on the ground, we find also how greatly views have changed. For ages past metal-using man has looked on the beautifully polished or chipped weapons of his forefathers as “thunderbolts,” possessing magic powers, and he often mounted the smaller ones to wear as charms. At the beginning of this century well-finished stone weapons were only preserved as curiosities which might belong to some remote age, but without any definite ideas about them. The recognition of long ages of earlier unpolished stone work has now put these more elaborate specimens to a comparatively late period, and yet they are probably older than the date to which our forefathers placed the creation of man.
The beginning of a more intelligent knowledge of such things was laid by the systematic excavations of the burial mounds scattered over the south of England, which was done in the early part of this century by Sir Richard Colt Hoare. A solid basis of facts was laid, which began to supersede the romances woven by Stukeley and others in the last century. Gradually more exact methods of search were introduced, and in the last thirty years Canon Greenwell has done much, and General Pitt Rivers has established a standard of accurate and complete work with perfect recording, which is the highest development of archæological study. These and other researches have opened up the life of Neolithic man to us, and we see that he was much as modern man, if compared with the earlier stage of man as a hunter. The Neolithic man made pottery, spun and wove linen, constructed enormous earthworks both for defence and for burial, and systematically made his tools of the best material he could obtain by combined labor in mining. The extensive flint-mines in chalk districts of England show long-continued labor; and the perfect form and splendid finish of many of the stone weapons show that skilled leisure could be devoted to them, and that æsthetic taste had been developed. The large camps prove that a thorough tribal organization prevailed, though probably confined to small clans.