,
in the dale of Arun, in the valleys of the Adur, the Ouse, and the
Cuckmere River, and perhaps, too, in the insulated Hastings region,
between the Pevensey levels and the Romney marsh. These principalities
would then roughly coincide with the modern rapes of Chichester,
Arundel, Bramber, Lewes, Pevensey, and Hastings. Each would possess its
own group of villages, and tilled lowland, its own boundary of forest,
and its own camp of refuge on the hill-tops. Cissbury almost
undoubtedly formed such a camp for the fertile valley of the Adur and
the coast strip from Worthing to Brighton. On its summit has been
discovered an actual manufactory of stone implements from the copious
material supplied by the flint veins in the chalk of which it is
composed.

Such a society, left to itself in Sussex, could never have got much
further than this. It could not discover or use metals, when it had no
metal in its soil except the small quantity of iron to be found in the
then inaccessible Weald. It had no copper and no tin, and therefore it
could not manufacture bronze. But the geographical position of England
generally, within sight of the European continent, made it certain that
if ever anywhere else bronze should come to be used, the
bronze-weaponed people must ultimately cross over and subjugate the
stone-weaponed aborigines of the island. Moreover, bronze was certain
to be first hit upon in those countries where tin and copper were most
easily workable--that is to say, in Asia. From Asia, the secret of its
manufacture spread to the outlying peninsula of Europe, where it was
quickly adopted by the Aryan Celts, who had already invaded the
outlying continent, armed only with weapons of stone. As soon as they
had learnt the use of bronze, certain great changes and improvements
followed naturally--amongst others, an immense advance in the art of
boat-building. The Celts of the bronze age soon constructed vessels
which enabled them to cross the narrow seas and invade Britain. Their
superior weapons gave them at once an enormous advantage over the
Euskarian natives, armed only with their polished flint hatchets, and
before long they overran the whole island, save only the recesses of
Wales and the north of Scotland. From that moment, the bronze age of
Britain set in--say some 1,000 or 1,500 years before the Christian era.

The Celts, however, did not exterminate the whole Euskarian people;
they were too few in number and too far advance