Pre-historic times, as illustrated by ancient remains, and the manners and customs of modern savages.

Lubbock introduced the terms "Paleolithic" and "Neolithic". His work addressed not only the topic of human antiquity but also the lives and cultures of people in the Stone Age. In contrast to researchers who focused on the geology of the prehistoric sites or on the tools found in them, Lubbock studied the artifacts of prehistoric cultures in order to shed light on their function, as part of an overall attempt to reconstruct what stone age life might have been like. In order to gain further insight he also studied a wide variety of non-western peoples, some of whose lives and cultures appeared to him to provide strong analogues to life during the Stone Age.