ABSTRACT
The foundations of the landscape of Britain were first laid down at the beginning of geological time, so long ago as to be quite incomprehensible in human terms, with the result that nine-tenths of this book is, paradoxically, concerned with a time-span which, in geological terms, is almost as incomprehensibly short. The immensities of geological time, like those of astronomical space, are so great that the human mind cannot make the required gear-change and thus fails to grasp more than a fraction of their significances. Geological structures, shaped by the immense, impersonal forces of geomorphological processes, provide, dispassionately and without bias or prejudice, a wide and varied range of opportunities and determinants which mould, in a thousand subtle, interrelated, and inescapable ways, that brief moment of time which is all that the individual human being is allowed between the cradle and the grave. It is for this reason that, because this book is concerned with man in his environment, this first chapter must look in some detail at the structure of the stage upon which he will act out his all-too-brief life.
