The Pit-dwellers
Other remains, not so ancient as these oldest stone implements
but still very ancient, are found nearer the surface than the
remains of the River-drift Men. They are the remains of people
who, like the Drift-men, knew nothing of metals; and they, too,
used stone weapons and tools, but these were now better made. They
had learned to shape and finish their tools by rubbing, grinding,
and polishing them, and they were a much more advanced race of men
than the Cave-or Drift-men. These later men, Neolithic Men, did not
depend upon the broken and chipped flints which they found lying
about on the surface, but discovered that it was better to dig up
whole flints, and to select those which were best suited for their
purpose, grinding them into the shapes which they wanted, and then
polishing them into more shapely and finished weapons.
For the most part we have to go to somewhat desolate parts of
England to find traces of them now. In fact those traces would long
ago have disappeared had they not been in places which were so wild
and difficult to get at that it was not worth any man's while to
cultivate them. The spade and the plough would very soon remove
all traces of them. In fact, the plough _has_ removed many traces
of these ancient men, and most of the specimens of their tools and
weapons, which you can see in museums, were found by men whilst
employed in ploughing and preparing the land for crops.
You must not suppose that we can fix a date when these men first
appeared, as we can fix an exact date for the landing of Julius
Cæsar, or the sealing of Magna Carta. Neither can we say for how
many centuries they occupied land in what we now call Britain. It
was a long period, at any rate, and during that time their manners
and their customs changed very, very slowly.
The lowest forms of savage life seem very much alike all the world
over. Savages are hunters, and do not as a rule cultivate the soil.
Now hunters must follow their prey from place to place, so that
we should expect these early men to have no settled homes. But
even the earliest Pit-men had advanced beyond this lowest stage,
for they had flocks and herds, and dogs. They found out that they
could tame some of the animals which they came across, and that
they could use them in various ways which the earlier men had not
thought of. They need not always go a-hunting for their food, and
they could have a supply at hand if they looked after it. They
discovered that they had a use for the wool and the milk which
these animals yielded, and so they developed into being a pastoral
people, owning flocks and herds. Then, too, they hit upon the art
of making rough pottery from clay, shaping the various vessels
which they wanted by hand, and baking them in a fire to harden
them. It seems that they found out a way to spin thread from the
wool, and also discovered how to weave it into a kind of rough
cloth, although they used skins for garments. No doubt these folk
hunted as well; but they were mainly a pastoral people, and at
first did not till the soil. Races of men who did not till the soil
are called Non-Aryan. They chose for their settlements the tops of
hills, and avoided the narrow valleys and low-lying lands.
The Pit-dwellers are so called from the simple fact that they had
their homes in pits--not, however, dug anywhere and anyhow. The
hole in the ground is the simplest notion of a house. When in your
summer holiday by the sea you see the little boys and girls digging
deep holes in the sand to make "houses", they are doing in play
what the early Pit-dwellers did in real earnest.
The pits were usually some six or eight feet in diameter, and they
probably had cone-shaped roofs, formed by poles tied together
and covered with peat. In the centre of the hut was the hearth,
which was made of flints carefully placed together. The hut would
hold two or three people, and the fire on the hearth was its most
important feature. The hut in the centre of the group belonged to
the head of the family, and other huts were ranged round it.
Surrounding the group was an earthen rampart for further
protection, and these earthworks can still be traced in many parts
of the country. The huts have gone, of course, and all that can
be seen in most cases now is a number of circular patches in the
turf, slightly hollowed. People living in the neighbourhood will
very likely speak of them as "fairy rings". It is from a careful
examination of these hollows that learned men have been able to
gather much information concerning the habits of these Pit-dwellers.
We English folk speak proudly of "hearth and home"; they are the
centre of our social life, and the idea has come down to us through
all these long, long ages. The hearth and the fire upon it was the
centre of the life of these men, and the head of a family was also
its priest.
Some of the best known of these pit-dwellings are found
near Brighthampton, in Oxfordshire; at Worlebury, near
Weston-super-Mare; and along the Cotswolds, looking over the Severn
valley; and at Hurstbourne, in Hampshire.
At this last place "nine of these early habitations were
discovered, some of which were roughly pitched with flint-stones,
and had passages leading into the pit. A few flints irregularly
placed, together with wood ashes, showed the position of the
hearths, where cooking operations had been carried on. The sloping
entrance passages are peculiar and almost unique in England, though
several have been met with in France."[1]
[1] _English Villages_, P. H. Ditchfield.
[Illustration: IMPLEMENTS AND ORNAMENTS OF STONE, BRONZE, AND
IRON AGES
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]
[2] Also between Hitchin and Cambridge, at Clothall, in Herts,
on the Chiltern Hills, on the steep side of the Sussex Downs, in
Clun Forest, in Carmarthenshire, and in Wilts.
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]
[3] See p. 10.
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.
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.
[Illustration: _Lake-dwelling_]