Page:Prehistoric Britain.djvu/245

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BRITISH ETHNOLOGY
237

roots, nuts, seeds, etc. They wandered chiefly along the shores of the British seas, where their haunts, workshops and relics are now mostly submerged. In course of time they pushed their way northward, as far as the Valley of the Forth and the islands on the west coast of Scotland, where they found a rich harvest among the luxuriant faunas of both sea and land. Had the bed of the English Channel been raised some forty or fifty feet, instead of being depressed to that extent, we would probably find many shell-heaps and other remains of feasting along the raised beaches of its shores. The only thing that improved the social life of this primitive population was the incoming of the first Neolithic immigrants from Europe, who brought with them the arts of cultivating plants and cereals, and the rearing of animals in a state of domestication. Henceforth the miserable shell-eaters, and other members of the "river-bed race," became clodhoppers and cowherds to the invaders. They, however, retained to a certain extent the cranial features as well as the culture habits of their forefathers with this difference, that while they had to eat snails and shell-fish, their hunting predecessors fed on steaks of horse and reindeer-flesh.

Shell-mounds may belong to any age, but it is to be noted that those of the early Transition period, such as the Kjøkkenmøddings of Denmark and Portugal, contain no bones of