reason of
the increased incentives to peaceful living, war was not usually
undertaken simply for the pleasure of fighting. Protection of flocks
and herds, of cleared fields and settled homes, became the chief
occasion of the wars waged by the Neolithic people.

In such a society as we have described, there is a community of
interest that tends to give stability to the ties of relationship. The
fairly settled state of life was undoubtedly accompanied by a social
organization of some sort that could properly deal with the matters
of individual rights. The family had become evolved from the horde;
promiscuity had doubtless given place to polygamy, or, under the
exceptional conditions of a greater number of men than of women, to
polyandry. Neither of these forms of marriage carried with it the idea
of fixity and of family responsibility.

A feature of the Neolithic age was its commerce. By a system of
intertribal traffic, the simple commodities of the widely dispersed
peoples of Europe became distributed among the various tribes. By this
means, many articles not of domestic manufacture were added to the
comfort of the people of Britain. Thus, the women were enabled to
adorn themselves with jade beads that must have come from the region
of the Mediterranean Sea, and even with gold ornaments from as distant
points. These instances, however, were exceptional, and are to be
accounted for in the same manner that we account for the most unlikely
things in the possession of the tribes of Central Africa--by gradual
hand-to-hand passage.

There was probably an absence of religious ideas among the
predecessors of the Polished Stone races; but among the remains of the
latter are ample proofs of the prevalence among them of such notions.
Caves that once had served them as residences were later used for
places of burial, the bodies being piled up with earth until the
cavities were completely filled. Accompanying human remains have
been found urns, supposedly for burning incense, personal ornaments,
implements, and weapons, placed there for the use of the dead. If the
people possessed religious conceptions that led them to believe in an
after life, there is no room for doubt that religion had a place in
the economy of their living. The women of this time, then, could look
forward to something better than abandonment to starvation after they
became enfeebled by age or sickness, and they may not have lacked
religious associations in t