Page:Prehistoric Britain.djvu/258

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250
PREHISTORIC BRITAIN

roughly formed implements of stone, bone and horn. They had few ornaments, little or no pottery, and no domestic animals with the possible exception of the dog. But even at this low and early stage there were among the shell-eaters of Portugal both dolichocephali and brachicephali. The former were greatly in excess of the latter in point of numbers, and being the descendants of the Palæolithic people may be regarded as indigenous. The latter, on their first appearance in Europe, were not more civilized than the former, but there was a constant stream of new-comers who gradually introduced improved methods in the manufacture of tools, the cultivation of grain, and the rearing of domestic animals.

Meantime the Troglodyte hunters of wild animals continued to live, but in gradually diminishing numbers, on the uplands of France and the flanks of the Pyrenees—localities where the reindeer and other animals of sub-Arctic origin still lingered. Contemporary with them, but outside the areas of their hunting-grounds, their fellow-countrymen, along with the ever-increasing population from Eastern lands, were devising new sources of food from the natural products of a more ameliorated climate. If the advancing geniality of the environment gave the coup-de-grâce to the sub-Arctic fauna and flora, it also supplied meteorological conditions favourable to fruit-growing, the cultivation of cereals, and the rearing of domestic animals. In