EARLY MAN WHEN the Romans under Julius Caesar invaded Britain in the years 55 and 54 B.C., they found the country inhabited by an extensive population living in tribes, those nearest to Gaul being the most civilized. Cssar, who never penetrated far into the interior of the country, could only have gained his know^- ledge of the inland tribes from hearsay, and not from personal observation. He says' that it is handed down by tradition that the people of the interior are the descendants of the aboriginal inhabitants. Now during the last half-century archeology has grown into a science under which the numerous remains of Prehistoric man found in the British Isles have been arranged and classified into certain ages or periods. Archsologists tell us that after Britain became an island, it was inhabited by a race of people belonging to what is called the Neolithic or New Stone age. These men were a small, dark, long-headed race, whose remains have been found in many parts of England and Wales, and in Scotland as far north as the Orkneys. Dr. Munro writes of them: 'Their faces were oval and rather short ; their features good, with flat cheek bones, fine jaws and prominent chins. They were evidently dark of skin, hair and eyes ; on the whole their expression must have been mild and humane.' These Neolithic peoples were succeeded and conquered and probably for the most part absorbed by a taller race of men of rounder skulls and lighter hair, who brought new burial customs with them and who used weapons of bronze. The descendants of this taller race, together with the immigrants of certain Gaulish and Belgic tribes, formed the bulk of the population of Britain at the time of Cesar's invasion. Cesar states that 'the inhabitants of Kent did not differ much from the Gallic tribes'; and speaking of the island generally, he says that ' the Maritime portion was inhabited by those who had passed over from the country of the Beige for the purpose of plunder and making war.' But to go back to a time previous to the appearance of Neolithic man, geologists inform us that in the Pleistocene age that part of the earth afterwards called Britain, and now called England, formed part of the continent, and that it was inhabited by a fauna very different from that of the succeeding Neolithic age. That man inhabited the southern part of the country is proved by the discovery of many stone implem.ents ' De bello Galftco, book v. chap. xii. 135
