Note 556 — Chapter XI

“The arts of spinning and the manufacture of linen were introduced into Europe and drifted into Britain in the Neolithic Age. They have been preserved with but little variation from that period down to the present day in certain remote parts of Europe, and have only been superseded in modern times by the complicated machinery so familiar to us.... The spindle and distaff are proved by the perforated spindle-whorls, made of stone, pottery, or bone, commonly met with in Neolithic habitations or tombs. The thread is proved, by discoveries in the Swiss lakes, to have been made of flax; and the combs that have been found for pushing the threads of the warp on the weft show that it was woven into linen on some sort of loom.”—Boyd Dawkins’ “Early Man in Britain,” p. 275.