yaena; amid whose remains we find their roughly-chipped flint
axes and arrow-heads, the fire-marked stones which they used in
boiling their water, and the sawn or broken bases of the antlers
which for some unknown purpose[6] they were in the habit of cutting
up--perhaps, like the Lapps of to-day, to anchor their sledges withal
in the snow. For the great Glacial Epoch, which had covered half the
Northern Hemisphere with its mighty ice-sheet, was still, in their
day, lingering on, and their environment was probably that of Northern
Siberia to-day. Some archaeologists, indeed, hold that they are to
this day represented by the Esquimaux races; but this theory cannot be
considered in any way proved.

A. 5.--Whether, indeed, they were "men" at all, in any real sense
of the word, may well be questioned. For of the many attempts which
philosophers in all ages have made to define the word "man," the only
one which is truly defensible is that which differentiates him
from other animals, not by his physical or intellectual, but by his
spiritual superiority. Many other creatures are as well adapted in
bodily conformation for their environment, and the lowest savages are
intellectually at a far lower level of development than the highest
insects; but none stand in the same relation to the Unseen. "Man," as
has been well said, "is the one animal that can pray." And there is
nothing amongst the remains of these "river-bed men" to show us that
they either did pray, or could. Intelligence, such as is now found
only in human beings, they undoubtedly had. But whether they had
the capacity for Religion must be left an unsolved problem. In this
connection, however, it may be noted that Tacitus, in describing the
lowest savages of his Germania [c. 46], "with no horses, no homes, no
weapons, skin-clad, nesting on the bare ground, men and women alike,
barely kept alive by herbs and such flesh as their bone-tipped arrows
can win them," makes it his climax that they are "beneath the need of
prayer;"--adding that this spiritual condition is, "beyond all others,
that least attainable by man."

SECTION B.

Neolithic Age--"Ugrians"--Polished flints--Jadite--Gold
ornaments--Cromlechs--Forts--Bronze Age--Copper and tin--Stonehenge.

B. 1.--Whatever they were, they vanish from our ken utterly, these
Palaeolithic savages, and are followed, after what lapse of time we
know not, by the users of polished flint weapons, the tribes of the
Neolithic