INHABITANTS OF BRITAIN TWENTY THOUSAND YEARS AGO.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XV, Issue 223, 20 September 1880, Page 4

INHABITANTS OF BRITAIN TWENTY THOUSAND YEA RS AGO.

" The Man of the Caverns *' was re-. • cently, says the Times, the subject of a London Institution lecture, which Was delivered in the theatre by Professor Boyd Dawkins, F.R.S., who fills tb& ...Q hair .of Geology in Owen's Gpllege, Manchester. He said that, jvh ilie, .the river-drift men and the cave men were living in Britain, the hills and valleys in the south of England presented thfe same outlines as they did how*. Coulcl we take our stand ifct those times on Shooter's Hill or on the Essex heights, and look, over the : Thap_eßiyal% in the of, London^ we should see a dense forest; covered with oak, ash, ancl Scotch fir, and the course of th 6 Thames marked by lines of willows ant) alders. A few thin columns of smoke rising over the tops of the trees would mark fche camping places of prijmeyalfrf htC^nfchef f fdr|sW|Wi^ boarß,,mammdth_a_d s rh^ horses, stages and elks, would meet v vJfißh ! 'Htf«"VtV^r w '.y es » an d sam ~ ,'mer'time^cohnfcle.s "herds of bisonslike those now ranging over the plains of , no|fch- western \ AuiericaX In the wihterlwere^vasfe -numbers *>af- reindeer!, and a few mus_-3heep, the mosfc arctic ofthe .mammalia in -its habits In-thri rivers were otters and beavers, and the explorer would be star.ledvby: the snor _ of the, hippppptamjis, in >f the reaches oi* the Thames inear^enfcford. Beasts of . -.i>_(.y ateo abounded, lions, leopards! : ( hyenas, grizzly., bears, wolves and foxes.] If we penetrated >i to one of fche camp. i fires we should Have seen the ijiver-j- - hunter,';chippinjf w;osmg"_ome of i those' rude, flint^implements" which lie* buried in H\ie London gravels __ong with the remains of tho^animals which hevhuhted. -The river-drift, man, in the . long course of ages, was succeeded by the ; man pf the caverns, like him a hunter, living on the same animals,' fan;d. more; highly\equipped for the tfattld . of life. Jn- the course "of time" fcheiicavd ,man disappeared, the, climate jj and geography of his, -. country befeame almost; what .it; is now,- the hiintetj stage of civilisation was superseded; by thafc .of : .the .herdsman and. the tiller of the ground and thd manufacturer,; of the' Neolithic Age., From the ..Neolithic Age down to the; present time the progress of man had 'been unbroken in Britain and .in -Europe, and the present condition, of the European peoples was to be looked upon as the result of a gradual. series' of changes by which civilization succeeded civilization, -and race . succeeded race, 1 ;". the*, old:' order .yielding- -place unto! fche new,'' because* ;the new order was. higher and nob ler; ■-