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INTRODUCTION
THIS little book
has come into being as a result of another that we wrote, and
illustrated, between 1915 and 1919. It was intended for boys and
girls, and we called it a History of Everyday Things in England.
An attempt was made to draw the eyes of our readers away from
the Destruction which was to the fore in those days, and to
present instead a picture of all the care and trouble which had
gone to the Construction of the everyday things that were being
destroyed. We gave the matter very careful consideration, and it
seemed to us essential that the things illustrated should be of
a type with which our readers would be familiar. Boys and girls,
in their summer holidays, might have seen the Norman work at
Norwich or Castle Rising, or the Renaissance work of Inigo Jones
at Raynham. With some reluctance we made no mention of any
earlier work. The doings of Roman, Saxon, and Dane were only
hinted at, and the prehistoric period was not mentioned at all.
We started with William the Conqueror, and finished at the end
of the eighteenth century. Since we appear to have interested
many boy and girl readers, we now want to fill in the long space
before 1066.
One is so apt to lump together all the earlier work, and think
of it as having been done in a few centuries ; the sense of
perspective is lost. History is rather like travelling on the
railway, the events flash past like telegraph posts, the nearer
ones having their due spaces in between; but if we look back,
the events, like the posts, are all bunched together and we
cannot realize the spaces. These spaces are as important as the
events of History, and represent the periods when people were
making up their minds ; recovering perhaps from great discisters,
or gathering their forces to go forward.
The races of mankind, like their works, develop by growth to
flower and decay, but always there is a re-birth or renaissance.
The Magdalenian Art we illustrate, died out in Azilian times,
yet still lives to inspire us ; that is the boys and girls who
want to do work, because if History is divided into events, and
spaces, then the people are divided into those who have ideas,
and want to do and make things, and the others who only deal in
the ideas, and benefit by them.
Personally we hold that History is not just dates, but a long
tale of man's life, labour, and achievement; and if this be so,
we cannot afford to neglect the doings of prehistoric men, who,
with flint for their material, made all the implements and
weapons they needed for their everyday life.
Here is an illustration of what we mean. William of Malmesbury
wrote in the twelfth century, of a monk of the monastery, Elmer
by name, who made a flying machine and flew for more than the
distance of a furlong; but, agitated by the violence of the wind
and the current of air, as well as by the consciousness of his
rash attempt, he fell and broke his legs, and was lame ever
after. He used to relate as the cause of his failure, his
forgetting to provide himself a tail." Elmer was lamed because,
being a pioneer, he lacked any history to go on ; he did not
leave any design behind him, but think how interesting it would
have been had he done so. The twelfth century is hardly
prehistoric, but sufficiently so to emphasize the principle,
that there is something to be found out from work well done in
any period.
Now to describe the everyday life of prehistoric man is
difiScult, because there is not any history to go on. This is
why we talk about these times as prehistoric. For any period
after the Roman occupation we have the actual written word to
depend upon ; even before that, in 330 B.C., Pytheas of
Marseilles sailed to Britain, and said the climate was foggy and
damp, and the people raised quantities of corn. In the
prehistoric period we have only the everyday things, and the
physical characteristics of the earth itself ; so the pick and
shovel become more useful than the pen, and men dig for the
information they need.
We call the pick and shovel historian an Archaeologist, from the
Greek archaios, ancient, and logos, discourse. The archaeologist
is helped by the astronomers and mathematicians, who are called
in to decide in matters of climatic change like the Glacial
Periods. A skull is found, like the one at Piltdown in Sussex,
and the anatomists examine it carefully to fit it into its place
as a link in the chain of man's development. The science of man
and mankind is called Anthropology, from anihropos, a man, and
logos, discourse. The science of life is Biology. Flint
implements are found, are being found now by Mr. Reid Moir,
under a bed which dates from Pliocene times. The geologists are
called in, and the great problem is debated, whether man could
have lived on the earth in this period.
So one must know something of geology, which is the science that
deals with the structure of the earth. A tremendous amount of
work has been done in—what is, from the historical point of
view—a very short time. We give references in the text which
show how very recent a growth is Archaeology. Many books have
been written, but these are on the whole not suitable for boys
and girls. We have therefore taken the ascertained and proved
facts, and have plotted these out as a plan. If our readers are
interested in this plan they can themselves raise a
superstructure of more advanced knowledge, and to this end our
authorities are named in this Introduction. We do not lay claim
to any great store of archaeological knowledge ourselves, and
have approached our task rather as illustrators. As painter and
architect, who have been making things ourselves all our lives,
we may perhaps be able to treat of the work of prehistoric man
in a sympathetic fashion, and hope our pictures will help boys
and girls to see these old people a little.
This brings up the question of how we are to approach
prehistoric man. We must free our minds of prejudice. Some
people will say that he was a loathsome creature, incredibly
dirty and unpleasant. Obviously this could not have been the
case with the Magdalenians, whose work we see on p. 95. There
will be other people who \vill regard our friend as the Noble
Savage, and clothe him in their minds with all the simple
virtues. It will not do to jump to conclusions. Shall we judge
him by his WORK? If we try to find out how he lived, the tools
he used, and the things that he made with them, then in the end
we shall have a picture in our own minds. This is the essential
part of reading a book, that it should help us to form our own
conclusions. So we do not seek to teach, nor do we wish to
preach, but we do want to interest our readers, and here we give
you fair warning. If we can do so; if this subtle little microbe
can work its way into your system, and you begin to grub about,
and want to find out how things were made and done, then for the
rest of your long lives the itching little worry will condemn
you to go on grubbing, and you will become archaeologists
yourselves.
We should like to thank our Publishers for the trouble they have
taken in publishing ; Mr. Reginald Smith and Mr. O. G. S.
Crawford for kindly advice ; Mr. Reid Moir for permission to
include our drawing of his theory of flint flaking; and our very
special thanks are due to Professor H. J. Fleure and Dr. A. C.
Haddon, who not only read through our MS. and proofs with the
greatest care, but as well made many suggestions which we feel
have added to the value of the book. We are indebted to our
friend Mr. Harold Falkner for information as to Farnham flints,
and M. Forestier and Mr. Cox, of the London Library, for
suggestions as to authorities.
MARJORIE AND C. H. B. QUENNELL.
Berkhamsted, Herts,
September 1921.
Electric
Scotland Note: We have made this book available below but
note that the book is in two part with the second taking us into
the Iron Age. The Introduction and first two pages are
missing in this book so as you'll see I've found another version
of Part 1 and so above have taken the introduction from it and
below have included the two missing pages.
CHAPTER I
THE A B C OF ARCHEOLOGY
WE said in our Introduction that the
archaeologist is a pick and shovel historian. He investigates
the lives of the ancient peoples, by the remains which they have
left behind them; he needs must dig for his information, because
the very earliest times are prehistoric, and no written word
remains. To dig is to find out how the earth's crust is built
up, and we must have some knowledge of its structure, if we are
to understand the many evidences of life that we shall find.
Geology, or the science of the earth, is of very recent growth.
It was during the Renaissance, in the sixteenth century,
that men first began to understand the meaning of fossils. In
this, as in so many other things, Leonardo da Vinci, the great
Italian painter (1452-15 19), was a pioneer. Here in England, it
was largely due to William Smith, who was born, on the 23rd of
March 1769, at Churchill, in Oxfordshire, that we now understand
the way the stratified rocks of the earth are built up layer by
layer. Steno, a Dane, who was a professor at Padua, had
originated this idea, and published a book on the subject in
1669, but it was left to William Smith to work out the detail in
this country. His father was a small farmer, and William had
little schooling, yet by his observation of the countryside, by
the time he was twenty-two he had constructed a system of
geology; and remember there was no system before.
When he was eighteen
he had been apprenticed to a land
surveyor, and later worked
on the canals which were being cut
through the countryside during the end of
the eighteenth century. This work, of course, afforded him a
splendid opportunity for observing the formation of the earth's
crust. So, very largely as a result of
Smith's work, we now know that the earth is built
up of a series of sedimentary strata, and
that these are in reality the sediment
which has been deposited
on the beds of old seas or lakes.
These vary in thickness and
position, in various parts of the world, but in all parts
they are in the same relative position one
to the other. The earth is rather like an
orange, with many skins of different colours, thicknesses,
and materials; here and
there a rude thumb has been
inserted, and one or more
skins torn out, but on each side of
the gap, beyond the damage,
we find the skins; rivers and seas
may fill the gap, or the skins be distorted by blisters, or
crinkled into mountains, but the principle of stratification
remains.
Professor Sollas in his
book. The Age of the Earth, has
an interesting chapter on
William Smith, and tells how
he conceived the idea of representing the
results of his work in a geological map..
"Alone and single-handed he
determined to accomplish in outline that
which the organized efforts of H.M. Geological Survey,
extended over half a century,
have not yet completed
in detail ; and he succeeded in his
task." William Smith has a further claim
to our attention, because he discovered
that not only were the fossils in the
various strata the remains of living organisms,
but that each stratum had its own
peculiar fossils which were typical of the
bed in which they
were deposited, and
the time when they were laid
down, and that in all parts of the
world they succeed each other in the same
relative order. In classical times it had been
thought that animal life could
generate itself in the mud and slime of
rivers and lakes, and
fossils were regarded as specimens
which had been left behind, or not
properly developed, and so
had been petrified into stone.
Geologists adopted and
developed Smith's ideas, and by the
discovery of the same kinds of fossils, in similar rocks in
different parts of the world, began to be
able to date them. In doing this they were
attacked by their
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