PART I : CHAPTER I.

 "The scene was savage, but the scene was new."rnrnrnScientists tell us many marvellous tales, none the less true becausernmarvellous, about the prehistoric past. Like the owl in the preface,rnthey are not discouraged because the starting-point is beyond reach; andrnwe, like the cat, should try to awaken our interest when evidences arernpresented to us that on first hearing sound like the wonderful tales ofrnthe Orient.rnrnThousands of years ago in our own land dwelt two races of people, thernRiver Drift-men and the Cave-dwellers. The River Drift-man was a hunterrnof a very low order, possessing only the limited intelligence of thernmodern Australian native. This man supported life much in the same wayrnwe should expect a man to do, surrounded by similar conditions; but, onrnthe other hand, the Cave-dweller showed a singular talent forrnrepresenting the animals he hunted, and his sketches reveal to us therncapacity he had for seeing the beauty and grace of natural objects. Wererna visit to be paid to the British Museum, his handicraft, rude whenrncompared to modern art, could be seen in the fragments beyond all cavilrnrecording his primitive culture.rnrnWithout, then, any very great stretch of imagination we can picture tornourselves this man as belonging to one of the most primitive types ofrnour race, having little occasion to use a vocabulary--save of a mostrnmeagre order; and indeed his language would embody only a supply ofrnwords just expressive of his few simple wants. Without daring to comparernprimitive culture with modern advancement, this prototype's appetitesrnwould have been possibly served for the greater part by sign-language,rnand the use of a few easy protophones. To-day, after the lapse of agesrnsince this Second Stone Age, man went up and possessed the land; we withrnour new inventions, wants, and newly-acquired tastes have added a legionrnof scientifically constructed sounds, built up on the foundation he laidrnwith his first utterances, for language is not the outcome of race, butrnof social contact. As an interpolation the tale of the EgyptianrnPsammetichus is worth telling at this stage.rnrnDesirous of finding--as the ancients then thought existed--the originalrnlanguage of mankind, Psammetichus isolated two babies from birth inrnseparate apartments, and for two years they were not allowed to hear thernsound of a human voice. At the end of that time they were broughtrntogether and kept for a few hours without food. Psammetichus thenrnentered the room, and both children uttered the same strange cry,"Becos, Becos." "Ah!" said Psammetichus, "'Becos, Becos,' why! that isrnPhrygian for bread," and Phrygian was said to have been the ancientrnuniversal language of man. Still, however one feels disposed to imaginernwhat took place in the Baby Kingdom of these remote ages, briefrnallusions only will be made to the veiled past, when eitherrnsign-language, or relics, or myths of long descent are presented to usrnin the form of nursery-lore.rnrnHow many thousands of years have gone by since the period known tornscientists as the Pleistocene was here--a time when the whole of Britainrnand North-West Europe wore a glistening mantle of ice, and when manrncould scarce exist, save on the fringe of the south-east littoral ofrnEngland--none can say. At all events it may be safely assumed that notrntill the end of the Pleistocene Era was Britain or Scandinavia the abodernof man, when the fauna and flora assumed approximately their presentrncondition, and the state of things called Recent by geologists set in.rnrnWhether the Aryans be accepted as the first people to inhabit ourrnice-bound shores in the remote past matters little, and from whence theyrnsprang (according to Max Müller "somewhere in Asia," or Dr. Schraderrn"European Russia," or Herr Penka "from the east to the far west of thernScandinavian Peninsula") matters still less, "for," says ProfessorrnHuxley, "the speakers of primitive Aryan may have been (themselves) arnmixture of two or more races, just as are the speakers of English or ofrnFrench at the present time"; and archæology takes us no further backrnthan into the Neolithic or Second Stone Age, when the poetry of thernhuman voice gave a dramatic value to the hitherto primitivernsign-language limitation of the Old Drift-men. At this age, thernNeolithic, arithmetical questions arising in the course of life wouldrnnecessarily assume a vocal value instead of a digital one. No longerrnwould fifteen be counted by holding out ten fingers and five toes, butrnan idiomatic phrase, descriptive of the former sign-language, "_of twornhands and one foot's worth_" would be used, just as to-day an Africanrnwould express the same problem in a number of cows, and as therncomparatively modern Roman used such pictorial phrases as "_to condemnrna person of his head_." From this era, centuries before the Celtrntraversed our shores, "the progress of civilisation" has gone on in onernunbroken continuity from the Second Stone Age man to the present time.