Ugh-Lomi and Uya by H.G. Wells — Read

This story is of a time beyond the memory of man, before the beginning

of history, before the beginning of speech almost, when men still eked out their scarce words by gestures, and talked together as the animals do, by the passing of simple thoughts from mind to mind--being themselves indeed still of the brotherhood of the beasts. Of a time when one might have walked dryshod from France (as we call it now) to England, and when a broad and sluggish Thames flowed through its marshes to meet its father Rhine, flowing through a wide and level country that is under water in these latter days, and which we know by the name of the North Sea. In that remote age the valley which runs along the foot of the Downs did not exist, and the south of Surrey was a range of hills, fir-clad on the middle slopes, and snow-capped the better part of the year. The cores its summits still remain as Leith Hill, and Pitch Hill, and Hindhead. On the lower slopes of the range below the grassy spaces where the wild horses grazed were forests of yew and sweet-chestnut and elm, and the thickets and dark places hid the grizzly bear and the hyena, and the grey apes clambered through the branches. And still lower amidst the woodland and marsh and open grass along the Wey did this little drama play itself out to the end that I have to tell. Fifty thousand years ago it was, fifty thousand years--if the estimates of the geologists are correct.