END OF THE OLD STONE AGE
We have now reached the end of the Old Stone Age, a period some 9,000
or 12,000 years ago. Certain new races entered Europe, and played a
part in the downfall of the tall artists. Two new races found their
way along the Danube, as revealed by the burials at Ofnet, in eastern
Bavaria. One of these is broad-headed and apparently from central
Asia, the other long-headed and perhaps of Mediterranean origin.
These races had a relatively high brain development. The first of
these is called the Furfooz-Grenelle race; the second was probably
a Mediterranean race, not related to the Brunn. This latter race,
or still another Mediterranean race, also entered Europe from north
Africa, into Spain; it is distinguished by conventionalized art.
There may have been another race, perhaps ancestral to the Teutonic,
coming along the shores of the Baltic. These races correspond to the
Azilian culture, which closed the Paleolithic Age. Its art is marked by
numerous flattened and painted pebbles, whose use is problematical, in
spite of many ingenious theories; the flints are a degenerate type of
Magdalenean stonework. There are as yet no polished stone implements.
The ceremonial burial at Ofnet is one of the strange exhibits of this
period.
Here was found a ceremonial burial of thirty-three skulls of two
distinct races, one short-headed, one long-headed, and neither related
to the Cro-Magnons. Twenty-seven of these were embedded in ochre and
arranged in a sort of nest, with the faces all looking westward.
The inner skulls were crushed, as if the outer ones had been added
from time to time. A yard away a nest of six more skulls was found,
arranged in the same manner. The interment must have taken place just
after death, for the lower jaws and some of the neck vertebrae were
found with each skull. The heads had been severed from the necks by a
sharp flint; its marks were visible on some of the vertebrae. These
skulls were mainly of women and children; only four were adult males.
Ingenious theories have been offered to explain this, ranging from
cannibalism to captivity and blood sacrifice. But the presence of
ornaments, and the novel arrangement of heads facing westward, indicate
that these theories must be held in abeyance until further evidence is
discovered.
This is the first burial in Europe (with the possible exception of
Grimaldi) which presents two or more races.
The broad-headed race here is probably kin to the late Paleolithic race
known as the Furfooz-Grenelle men. In 1867, in a cave near Furfooz,
Belgium, sixteen skeletons were discovered. These were short-headed
men. The Grenelle skulls, found near Paris, are probably Neolithic;
but this is no reason for denying them kinship with the Furfooz race,
whom they closely resemble. The bulk of the evidence points to their
migration from central Asia.
The narrow-headed Mediterranean race is another matter; they probably
came from the south. At about the same time, the retreat of the
northern icefield permitted a migration along the shores of the Baltic,
which may have been the advance wave of the Teutonic peoples. They
are known today only by their industries; no skeletons have as yet
been discovered. Their art was entirely unconventionalized, and much
cruder than the Cro-Magnon art. It is probably contemporaneous with the
Azilian culture in the south.
The brain capacity of these various races may be compared in a table:
TABLE OF BRAIN CAPACITIES
Brain Capacity
c. cm.
Recent European (average) 1400-1500
Ofnet race (short-headed) 1400
Ofnet race (long-headed) 1500
Cro-Magnon (average) 1800
Grimaldi race (negroid) 1580
Brunn race 1350
Neanderthal race 1296-1723
Piltdown race 1400
Trinil race (Ape-man) 950
Apes (maximum) 600
There is no evidence for the migration routes of the earlier
races—although their cultures point to a southerly entrance, in the
cases of the Trinil, Piltdown, Heidelberg, and Neanderthal men.
Industrial evidence points to the north African route as the path of
the Cro-Magnons; the Grimaldi negroids came from the same direction.
The succeeding culture, the Solutrean, apparently came from the east,
as did the Brunn race which followed. Toward the close of the Upper Old
Stone Age we find another southerly or Mediterranean invasion; during
the same period there is the Furfooz-Grenelle approach from the East,
and perhaps the Baltic from the north.
Whether the Neolithic or polished stone workers suddenly appeared
and overcame the chipped stone wielders, or whether these gradually
filtered in, science cannot now with certainty answer. It is certain
that the men using the polished stones appeared in France, then in the
Swiss lake region, where they built their lake-dwellings on high piles
driven into the lake-bed. Along with the disappearing chipped stone
implements we find more and more made of polished stone. Agriculture
began, together with implements for preparing the soil and harvesting
the crops. Nomadic life began to be abandoned, in favor of more settled
dwellings. Even more distinctive is the appearance of pottery, used
first in the preparation and preservation of food. The art began over
with crude naturalistic drawings. Man had entered upon another upward
step in his slow progress from his lowly ancestry.
Thus we have seen the Old Stone Age in its entirety, its beginning, its
height, and its decline. It has been read from the slow carving of vast
natural forces, glaciers and seas, upon the ancient rocky skeleton of
the earth; it has been deciphered from the scattered remains of tree
apes and ground apes, from ape-men, dawn men, and true men; it has been
pieced together from the rude implements fashioned out of this same
stone by these early workers. Man has as yet read hardly the first page
of the great Record of the Rocks. The fascinating task of perusing the
rest of the record is still before us.
Transcriber’s notes
Hyphenation has been retained as it appears in the original publication,
except for hyphenation when splitting words across two lines.
The author uses “Pithecanthropos” and “Eoanthropos” instead of
“Pithecanthropus” and “Eoanthropus”. Since he is consistent in this, the
spelling most likely isn’t a printing error and therefore maintained.
The table “TABLE OF IMPLEMENT CULTURE” is moved to a nearby space
between paragraphs.
Corrections
Page 16 “In Belgium and elsewere” changed to “In Belgium and
elsewhere”;
Page 23 “the Piltdown man was a probable ancester” changed to “the
Piltdown man was a probable ancestor”;
Page 51 “with a cranial capacity avering” changed to “with a cranial
capacity averaging”;
Page 52 period changed to comma after “and succeeding ages range from
the primitive mammoth”;
Page 56 “the ancestors of the Basques conquered the Cro-Manons” changed
to “the ancestors of the Basques conquered the Cro-Magnons”;
Formatting conventions
Italic words have been indicated with underscore characters, for
example, “_word_”;