EARLY MAN It has been stated that the ridge on which lie the various gravels with which we are dealing runs from south to north ; is bounded on the east by a side valley of the Lark river-system, and on the west slopes down to the plain of Cambridgeshire and of the Fens. This plain was obviously excavated after the deposit of the gravels ; and after this excavation the whole district must have gone under water, probably that of a lagoon ; for a deep hollow which was made in the side of the ridge where High Lodge now stands became filled with brick-earth, which during the past forty years has been worked for commercial purposes. The brick-earth would seem to have been of slow formation, and during this period the banks of the lagoon were inhabited by a race of men who made their imple- ments on the spot where they are now found, the implements being subsequently buried in the slow deposit from the water of the lagoon, and there they have remained to this day. That the implements are lying where they were dropped by their makers and users seems clear from the fact that they are as sharp and fresh as the day they were made ; and having been protected from atmospheric conditions they are for the most part wholly unpatinated — as black and as dull as if made yesterday ; so much so that archaeologists unacquainted with the circumstances have found it difficult to believe that they are not modern forgeries. This view that the implements have never been moved since they dropped from the hands of their makers is borne out by the fact that in addition to the perfect implements there are in the brick-earth large numbers of flakes and rough pieces, just as one would expect to find on the site of a workshop of flint implements, all of them as sharp and as fresh and as unpatinated as the implements themselves. But now comes the interesting point. These implements are not ' drift ' implements. They are wholly unlike the implements found in the neighbouring gravels, or in fact in any gravels. On the other hand they resemble in the closest possible way the implements found in such large numbers in the rock-shelter of Le Moustier in the valley of the Vezere in Dordogne, which have become the prototypes for the great ' Mousterian ' division of palaeolithic time. Implements of definite ' Mousterian ' type have now been found in various parts of Europe and elsewhere ; the latest great discovery of the kind having been in the ' Grotte- du-Prince ' at Mentone, where more than 60 vertical feet of deposits of this age were carefully excavated. To show the vast length of time that this particular civilization must have lasted, reference need only be made to the fact that in the lower strata of the ' Grotte-du-Prince ' the Mousterian implements were associated with the bones of sub-tropical animals — a sub-tropical elephant and rhinoceros and the hippopotamus ; whilst in the upper strata the same class of implement was associated with the bones of sub-arctic animals — a sub-arctic elephant the mammoth, a sub-arctic rhinoceros, and the reindeer. We need not be surprised, then, that our Mousterian man at High Lodge lived on the side of our ridge for a time sufficient for the level of the lagoon waters gradually to rise, slowly burying the handiwork of generation after generation until the brick-earths had accumulated to a depth of more, probably much more, than 30ft., implements being found at all depths in the brick-earth. It is a curious fact that except for this rich deposit at High Lodge, the Mousterian Age is practically unrepresented in England ; and the deposit 243
