Evidence is, however, that it is not always possible to draw any clear
line between the Old and New Stone Ages. In one respect the former was
towards its close even in advance of the latter, and quite a
“Paleolithic School of Art” was developed during a long period of steady
progress in the sheltered Vézère valley, of South France. Here were
produced some of those remarkable stone, horn, and even ivory scrapers,
gravers, harpoons, ornaments and statuettes with carvings on the round,
and skilful etchings of seals, fishes, reindeer, harnessed horses,
mammoths, snakes, and man himself, which also occur in other districts.
In Tunisia many implements lie under a thick bed of Pleistocene
limestone deposited by a river which has since disappeared. The now
absolutely lifeless Libyan plateau is strewn with innumerable worked
flints, showing that early man inhabited this formerly fertile region
before it was reduced by the slowly changing climate to a waste of
sands. The same story of man’s great age is told by discoveries in
Burma, India, North and especially South America, and now also in Great
Britain.