ished by rubbing on
stone moulds. There is no sudden leap in culture or intelligence in the
story of man.

It would be supremely interesting to trace the evolution of human
industries and ideas during the few tens of thousands of years of the
New Stone Age. During that time moral and religious ideas are largely
developed, political or social forms are elaborated, and the arts of
civilised man have their first rude inauguration. The foundations of
civilisation are laid. Unfortunately, precisely because the period is
relatively so short and the advance so rapid, its remains are crushed
and mingled in a thin seam of the geological chronicle, and we cannot
restore the gradual course of its development with any confidence.
Estimates of its duration vary from 20,000 to 70,000 years; though
Sir W. Turner has recently concluded, from an examination of marks
on Scottish monuments, that Neolithic man probably came on foot from
Scandinavia to Scotland, and most geologists would admit that it must be
at least a hundred thousand years since one could cross from Norway
to Scotland on foot. As usual, we must leave open the question of
chronology, and be content with a modest provisional estimate of 40,000
or 50,000 years.

We dimly perceive the gradual advance of human culture in this important
period. During the Old Stone Age man had made more progress than he had
made in the preceding million years; during the New Stone Age--at least
one-fourth as long as the Old--he made even greater progress; and, we
may add, in the historical period, which is one-fourth the length of the
Neolithic Age, he will make greater progress still. The pace of advance
naturally increases as intelligence grows, but that is not the whole
explanation. The spread of the race, the gathering of its members into
tribes, and the increasing enterprise of men in hunting and migration,
lead to incessant contacts of different cultures and a progressive
stimulation.

At first Neolithic man is content with finer weapons. His stone axe is
so finely shaped and polished that it sometimes looks like forged or
moulded metal. He also drills a clean hole through it--possibly by means
of a stick working in wet sand--and gives it a long wooden handle. He
digs in the earth for finer flints, and in some of his ancient shafts
(Grimes, Graves and Cissbury) we find picks of reindeer horn
and hollowed blocks of chalk in which he probably burned fat for
illumination underground. Bu