A Book of Dartmoor Author:Sabine Baring-Gould Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE ANCIENT INHABITANTS Abundance of remains of primeval inhabitants No trace of Briton or Saxon on Dartmoor None of Palaeolithic man The N... more »eolithic man who occupied it Account of his migrations His presence in Ireland, in China, in Algeria A pastoral people The pottery The arrival of the Celt in Britain in two waves The Gael The Briton Introduction of iron Mode of life of the original occupants of the moor The huts Pounds Cooking Tracklines Enormous numbers who lived on Dartmoor A peaceable people. ROB ABLY no other tract of land of the same extent in England contains such numerous and well-preserved remains of prehistoric antiquity as Dartmoor. The curious feature about them is that they all belong to one period, that of the Early Bronze, when flint was used abundantly, but metal was known, and bronze was costly and valued as gold is now. Not a trace has been found so far of the peoples who intervened between these primitive occupants and the mediaeval tin-miners. If iron was introduced a couple of centuries before the Christian era, how is it that the British inhabitants who used iron and had it in abundance have left no mark of their occupancy of Dartmoor? It can be accounted for only on the supposition that they did not value it. The woods had been thinnedand they preferred the lowlands, whereas in the earlier period the dense forests that clothed the country were too close a jungle and too much infested by wolves to be suitable for the habitation of a pastoral people. That under the Roman domination the tin was worked on the moor there is no evidence to show. No Roman coins have been found there except a couple brought by French prisoners to Princetown. It may be said that iron would corrode and disappear, w...« less