Page:Prehistoric Britain.djvu/129

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NEOLITHIC CIVILIZATION
121

poons of Oban and Mas-d'Azil have also been discovered in several other localities in North Britain. One was found in the bed of the Dee, near Kirkcudbright (Fig. 20, No. 2); another in the Victoria cave, near Settle (No. 1); and a third in the vicinity of Newcastle, now preserved in the Archæological Museum of that town (No. 3). Specimens have also been recorded from some of the earlier Swiss lake- dwellings (No. 8) and turbaries (peat-dogs) of North Italy. Number 9 on the same figure is from Laugerie Basse (Dordogne).

Nor is the above the only line of evidence to show that Scotland was inhabited by a race of primitive people who manufactured implements of deer-horn, and lived on shell-fish and such marine animals as chance or strategy brought within their reach, prior to the last land elevation of the country. Implements of deer-horn associated with the skeletons of stranded whales have been found in various parts of the valley of the Forth, localities which at the present time are the most highly cultivated in Scotland. One such implement (Fig. 25), unique of its kind, is preserved in the Anatomical Museum of the University of Edinburgh. It was described by Sir W. Turner in 1889, at a meeting of the British Association then held at Newcastle-on-Tyne. It is made of a piece of stag-horn, 11 inches long and 61/2 inches in its greatest girth; truncated at one end and bevelled into a cutting edge at the other, with a perforation not in the middle but a couple of inches nearer