A HISTORY OF WORCESTERSHIRE
on the other.'[1] It commences with the time when by a great submergence Britain was separated from the continent on the east and from Ireland on the west—when this subsidence of the land made the large estuaries of the Severn and Avon. This subsidence and its results must have produced a profound change in the general conditions of the country. It was no longer part of the regular continental system. It had become an isolated sea-girt region; the great beasts, being no longer recruited by wanderers from the continent, soon became extinct. The inhabitants were no longer nomadic tribes, having the whole continent of Europe to wander over; they were confined to a narrow locality, and this confinement must have deeply affected their modes of life, especially when in all probability it was accompanied by considerable climatic changes, necessitating an alteration in the people's habits. It is impossible to fix the period during which these great changes were brought about, or to give anything like dates for their beginning or their end. All that can be said is that the Prehistoric period extends from the time of the separation of Britain from the continent to the time of Cæsar's invasion. Between these two limits the inhabitants of these islands passed from the stage of the Palæolithic man to the civilization which they possessed when the earliest historic record of them is reached. During this interval their development was enormous and must have occupied long series of years, how many it is impossible to say. A modern writer puts it at somewhere about 270,000 years,[2] this, it is needless to say, is only his guess.
The interval between the separation from the continent and historic times is divisible into three distinct periods, called either after the weapons (a) Neolithic, (b) Bronze and (c) Iron, or after the people using those weapons (a) Iberian, (b) Goidelic and (c) Brythonic.
Traces of each of these periods, mostly consisting of finds of the weapons, have been discovered in the southern and western parts of Worcestershire, but so far in the north and east of the county nothing has been found.
The present height of the Severn at Worcester and of the Avon at Evesham, under 100 feet above sea-level, proves that one great feature in the history of the county since the subsidence has been the silting up of the estuaries. In this silt remains have been found which can be ascribed to each of the three periods of the Prehistoric age.
The men of the Neolithic times, so far as our present evidence goes, were mostly herdsmen and flockmasters. When they advanced into Worcestershire, they settled on the highlands which overlook the rich pastures of the river valleys. In Worcestershire these highlands were (a) the Lickey Hills, that ridge of hills running across the county from Alvechurch to Stourbridge; (b) the Malvern Hills, the ridge running north and south and forming the western county boundary; and (c) Bredon Hill, the great detached outlier of the Cotswolds on the south. Each of these three groups of hills has furnished evidence of the presence of Neolithic settlers in the shape of weapons and implements.
- ↑ Early Man, p. 247.
- ↑ Hackel, The Last Link, 149.
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