swamp the set of older habits in Europe, too; the use of flake
tools also continued there. This was not so apparent to the older
archeologists, whose attention was focused on individual tool types. It
is not, in fact, impossible--although it is certainly not proved--that
the technique developed in the preparation of the Levalloisian tortoise
core (and the striking of the Levalloisian flake from it) might have
followed through to the conical core and punch technique for the
production of blades. Professor Garrod is much impressed with the speed
of change during the later phases of the last glaciation, and its
probable consequences. She speaks of “the greater number of industries
having enough individual character to be classified as distinct ...
since evolution now starts to outstrip diffusion.” Her “evolution” here
is of course an industrial evolution rather than a biological one.
Certainly the people of Europe had begun to make blade tools during
the warm spell after the first phase of the last glaciation. By about
40,000 years ago blades were well established. The bones of the blade
tool makers we’ve found so far indicate that anatomically modern men
had now certainly appeared. Unfortunately, only a few fossil men have
so far been found from the very beginning of the blade tool range in
Europe (or elsewhere). What I certainly shall _not_ tell you is that
conquering bands of fine, strong, anatomically modern men, armed with
superior blade tools, came sweeping out of the East to exterminate the
lowly Neanderthalers. Even if we don’t know exactly what happened, I’d
lay a good bet it wasn’t that simple.
We do know a good deal about different blade industries in Europe.
Almost all of them come from cave layers. There is a great deal of
complication in what we find. The chart (p. 72) tries to simplify
this complication; in fact, it doubtless simplifies it too much. But
it may suggest all the complication of industries which is going
on at this time. You will note that the upper portion of my much
simpler chart (p. 65) covers the same material (in the section
marked “Various Blade-Tool Industries”). That chart is certainly too
simplified.
You will realize that all this complication comes not only from
the fact that we are finding more material. It is due also to the
increasing ability of men to adapt themselves to a great variety of
situations. Their tools indicate this adaptiveness. We know there was
a good deal of climatic change at this time. The plants and animals
that men used for food were changing, too. The great variety of tools
and industries we now find reflect these changes and the ability of men
to keep up with the times. Now, for example, is the first time we are
sure that there are tools to _make_ other tools. They also show men’s
increasing ability to adapt themselves.
SPECIAL TYPES OF BLADE TOOLS
The most useful tools that appear at this time were made from blades.
1. The “backed” blade. This is a knife made of a flint blade, with
one edge purposely blunted, probably to save the user’s fingers
from being cut. There are several shapes of backed blades (p.
73).
[Illustration: TWO BURINS]
2. The _burin_ or “graver.” The burin was the original chisel. Its
cutting edge is _transverse_, like a chisel’s. Some burins are
made like a screw-driver, save that burins are sharp. Others have
edges more like the blade of a chisel or a push plane, with
only one bevel. Burins were probably used to make slots in wood
and bone; that is, to make handles or shafts for other tools.
They must also be the tools with which much of the engraving on
bone (see p. 83) was done. There is a bewildering variety of
different kinds of burins.
[Illustration: TANGED POINT]
3. The “tanged” point. These stone points were used to tip arrows or
light spears. They were made from blades, and they had a long tang
at the bottom where they were fixed to the shaft. At the place
where the tang met the main body of the stone point, there was
a marked “shoulder,” the beginnings of a barb. Such points had
either one or two shoulders.
[Illustration: NOTCHED BLADE]
4. The “notched” or “strangulated” blade. Along with the points for
arrows or light spears must go a tool to prepare the arrow or
spear shaft. Today, such a tool would be called a “draw-knife” or
a “spoke-shave,” and this is what the notched blades probably are.
Our spoke-shaves have sharp straight cutting blades and really
“shave.” Notched blades of flint probably scraped rather than cut.
5. The “awl,” “drill,” or “borer.” These blade tools are worked out
to a spike-like point. They must have been used for making holes
in wood, bone, shell, skin, or other things.
[Illustration: DRILL OR AWL]
6. The “end-scraper on a blade” is a tool with one or both ends
worked so as to give a good scraping edge. It could have been used
to hollow out wood or bone, scrape hides, remove bark from trees,
and a number of other things (p. 78).
There is one very special type of flint tool, which is best known from
western Europe in an industry called the Solutrean. These tools were
usually made of blades, but the best examples are so carefully worked
on both sides (bifacially) that it is impossible to see the original
blade. This tool is
7. The “laurel leaf” point. Some of these tools were long and
dagger-like, and must have been used as knives or daggers. Others
were small, called “willow leaf,” and must have been mounted on
spear or arrow shafts. Another typical Solutrean tool is the
“shouldered” point. Both the “laurel leaf” and “shouldered” point
types are illustrated (see above and p. 79).
[Illustration: END-SCRAPER ON A BLADE]
[Illustration: LAUREL LEAF POINT]
The industries characterized by tools in the blade tradition also
yield some flake and core tools. We will end this list with two types
of tools that appear at this time. The first is made of a flake; the
second is a core tool.
[Illustration: SHOULDERED POINT]
8. The “keel-shaped round scraper” is usually small and quite round,
and has had chips removed up to a peak in the center. It is called
“keel-shaped” because it is supposed to look (when upside down)
like a section through a boat. Actually, it looks more like a tent
or an umbrella. Its outer edges are sharp all the way around, and
it was probably a general purpose scraping tool (see illustration,
p. 81).
9. The “keel-shaped nosed scraper” is a much larger and heavier tool
than the round scraper. It was made on a core with a flat bottom,
and has one nicely worked end or “nose.” Such tools are usually
large enough to be easily grasped, and probably were used like
push planes (see illustration, p. 81).
[Illustration: KEEL-SHAPED ROUND SCRAPER]
[Illustration: KEEL-SHAPED NOSED SCRAPER]
The stone tools (usually made of flint) we have just listed are among
the most easily recognized blade tools, although they show differences
in detail at different times. There are also many other kinds. Not
all of these tools appear in any one industry at one time. Thus the
different industries shown in the chart (p. 72) each have only some
of the blade tools we’ve just listed, and also a few flake tools. Some
industries even have a few core tools. The particular types of blade
tools appearing in one cave layer or another, and the frequency of
appearance of the different types, tell which industry we have in each
layer.
OTHER KINDS OF TOOLS
By this time in Europe--say from about 40,000 to about 10,000 years
ago--we begin to find other kinds of material too. Bone tools begin
to appear. There are knives, pins, needles with eyes, and little
double-pointed straight bars of bone that were probably fish-hooks. The
fish-line would have been fastened in the center of the bar; when the
fish swallowed the bait, the bar would have caught cross-wise in the
fish’s mouth.
One quite special kind of bone tool is a long flat point for a light
spear. It has a deep notch cut up into the breadth of its base, and is
called a “split-based bone point” (p. 82). We know examples of bone
beads from these times, and of bone handles for flint tools. Pierced
teeth of some animals were worn as beads or pendants, but I am not sure
that elks’ teeth were worn this early. There are even spool-shaped
“buttons” or toggles.
[Illustration: SPLIT-BASED BONE POINT]
[Illustration: SPEAR-THROWER]
[Illustration: BONE HARPOON]
Antler came into use for tools, especially in central and western
Europe. We do not know the use of one particular antler tool that
has a large hole bored in one end. One suggestion is that it was
a thong-stropper used to strop or work up hide thongs (see
illustration, below); another suggestion is that it was an arrow-shaft
straightener.
Another interesting tool, usually of antler, is the spear-thrower,
which is little more than a stick with a notch or hook on one end.
The hook fits into the butt end of the spear, and the length of the
spear-thrower allows you to put much more power into the throw (p.
82). It works on pretty much the same principle as the sling.
Very fancy harpoons of antler were also made in the latter half of
the period in western Europe. These harpoons had barbs on one or both
sides and a base which would slip out of the shaft (p. 82). Some have
engraved decoration.
THE BEGINNING OF ART
[Illustration: THONG-STROPPER]
In western Europe, at least, the period saw the beginning of several
kinds of art work. It is handy to break the art down into two great
groups: the movable art, and the cave paintings and sculpture. The
movable art group includes the scratchings, engravings, and modeling
which decorate tools and weapons. Knives, stroppers, spear-throwers,
harpoons, and sometimes just plain fragments of bone or antler are
often carved. There is also a group of large flat pebbles which seem
almost to have served as sketch blocks. The surfaces of these various
objects may show animals, or rather abstract floral designs, or
geometric designs.
[Illustration: “VENUS” FIGURINE FROM WILLENDORF]
Some of the movable art is not done on tools. The most remarkable
examples of this class are little figures of women. These women seem to
be pregnant, and their most female characteristics are much emphasized.
It is thought that these “Venus” or “Mother-goddess” figurines may be
meant to show the great forces of nature--fertility and the birth of
life.
CAVE PAINTINGS
In the paintings on walls and ceilings of caves we have some examples
that compare with the best art of any time. The subjects were usually
animals, the great cold-weather beasts of the end of the Ice Age: the
mammoth, the wooly rhinoceros, the bison, the reindeer, the wild horse,
the bear, the wild boar, and wild cattle. As in the movable art, there
are different styles in the cave art. The really great cave art is
pretty well restricted to southern France and Cantabrian (northwestern)
Spain.
There are several interesting things about the “Franco-Cantabrian” cave
art. It was done deep down in the darkest and most dangerous parts of
the caves, although the men lived only in the openings of caves. If you
think what they must have had for lights--crude lamps of hollowed stone
have been found, which must have burned some kind of oil or grease,
with a matted hair or fiber wick--and of the animals that may have
lurked in the caves, you’ll understand the part about danger. Then,
too, we’re sure the pictures these people painted were not simply to be
looked at and admired, for they painted one picture right over other
pictures which had been done earlier. Clearly, it was the _act_ of
_painting_ that counted. The painter had to go way down into the most
mysterious depths of the earth and create an animal in paint. Possibly
he believed that by doing this he gained some sort of magic power over
the same kind of animal when he hunted it in the open air. It certainly
doesn’t look as if he cared very much about the picture he painted--as
a finished product to be admired--for he or somebody else soon went
down and painted another animal right over the one he had done.
The cave art of the Franco-Cantabrian style is one of the great
artistic achievements of all time. The subjects drawn are almost always
the larger animals of the time: the bison, wild cattle and horses, the
wooly rhinoceros, the mammoth, the wild boar, and the bear. In some of
the best examples, the beasts are drawn in full color and the paintings
are remarkably alive and charged with energy. They come from the hands
of men who knew the great animals well--knew the feel of their fur, the
tremendous drive of their muscles, and the danger one faced when he
hunted them.
Another artistic style has been found in eastern Spain. It includes
lively drawings, often of people hunting with bow and arrow. The East
Spanish art is found on open rock faces and in rock-shelters. It is
less spectacular and apparently more recent than the Franco-Cantabrian
cave art.
LIFE AT THE END OF THE ICE AGE IN EUROPE
Life in these times was probably as good as a hunter could expect it
to be. Game and fish seem to have been plentiful; berries and wild
fruits probably were, too. From France to Russia, great pits or
piles of animal bones have been found. Some of this killing was done
as our Plains Indians killed the buffalo--by stampeding them over
steep river banks or cliffs. There were also good tools for hunting,
however. In western Europe, people lived in the openings of caves and
under overhanging rocks. On the great plains of eastern Europe, very
crude huts were being built, half underground. The first part of this
time must have been cold, for it was the middle and end phases of the
last great glaciation. Northern Europe from Scotland to Scandinavia,
northern Germany and Russia, and also the higher mountains to the
south, were certainly covered with ice. But people had fire, and the
needles and tools that were used for scraping hides must mean that they
wore clothing.
It is clear that men were thinking of a great variety of things beside
the tools that helped them get food and shelter. Such burials as we
find have more grave-gifts than before. Beads and ornaments and often
flint, bone, or antler tools are included in the grave, and sometimes
the body is sprinkled with red ochre. Red is the color of blood, which
means life, and of fire, which means heat. Professor Childe wonders if
the red ochre was a pathetic attempt at magic--to give back to the body
the heat that had gone from it. But pathetic or not, it is sure proof
that these people were already moved by death as men still are moved by
it.
Their art is another example of the direction the human mind was
taking. And when I say human, I mean it in the fullest sense, for this
is the time in which fully modern man has appeared. On page 34, we
spoke of the Cro-Magnon group and of the Combe Capelle-Brünn group of
Caucasoids and of the Grimaldi “Negroids,” who are no longer believed
to be Negroid. I doubt that any one of these groups produced most of
the achievements of the times. It’s not yet absolutely sure which
particular group produced the great cave art. The artists were almost
certainly a blend of several (no doubt already mixed) groups. The pair
of Grimaldians were buried in a grave with a sprinkling of red ochre,
and were provided with shell beads and ornaments and with some blade
tools of flint. Regardless of the different names once given them by
the human paleontologists, each of these groups seems to have shared
equally in the cultural achievements of the times, for all that the
archeologists can say.
MICROLITHS
One peculiar set of tools seems to serve as a marker for the very last
phase of the Ice Age in southwestern Europe. This tool-making habit is
also found about the shore of the Mediterranean basin, and it moved
into northern Europe as the last glaciation pulled northward. People
began making blade tools of very small size. They learned how to chip
very slender and tiny blades from a prepared core. Then they made these
little blades into tiny triangles, half-moons (“lunates”), trapezoids,
and several other geometric forms. These little tools are called
“microliths.” They are so small that most of them must have been fixed
in handles or shafts.
[Illustration: MICROLITHS
BLADE FRAGMENT
BURIN
LUNATE
TRAPEZOID
SCALENE TRIANGLE
ARROWHEAD]
We have found several examples of microliths mounted in shafts. In
northern Europe, where their use soon spread, the microlithic triangles
or lunates were set in rows down each side of a bone or wood point.
One corner of each little triangle stuck out, and the whole thing
made a fine barbed harpoon. In historic times in Egypt, geometric
trapezoidal microliths were still in use as arrowheads. They were
fastened--broad end out--on the end of an arrow shaft. It seems queer
to give an arrow a point shaped like a “T.” Actually, the little points
were very sharp, and must have pierced the hides of animals very
easily. We also think that the broader cutting edge of the point may
have caused more bleeding than a pointed arrowhead would. In hunting
fleet-footed animals like the gazelle, which might run for miles after
being shot with an arrow, it was an advantage to cause as much bleeding
as possible, for the animal would drop sooner.
We are not really sure where the microliths were first invented. There
is some evidence that they appear early in the Near East. Their use
was very common in northwest Africa but this came later. The microlith
makers who reached south Russia and central Europe possibly moved up
out of the Near East. Or it may have been the other way around; we
simply don’t yet know.
Remember that the microliths we are talking about here were made from
carefully prepared little blades, and are often geometric in outline.
Each microlithic industry proper was made up, in good part, of such
tiny blade tools. But there were also some normal-sized blade tools and
even some flake scrapers, in most microlithic industries. I emphasize
this bladelet and the geometric character of the microlithic industries
of the western Old World, since there has sometimes been confusion in
the matter. Sometimes small flake chips, utilized as minute pointed
tools, have been called “microliths.” They may be _microlithic_ in size
in terms of the general meaning of the word, but they do not seem to
belong to the sub-tradition of the blade tool preparation habits which
we have been discussing here.
LATER BLADE-TOOL INDUSTRIES OF THE NEAR EAST AND AFRICA
The blade-tool industries of normal size we talked about earlier spread
from Europe to central Siberia. We noted that blade tools were made
in western Asia too, and early, although Professor Garrod is no longer
sure that the whole tradition originated in the Near East. If you look
again at my chart (p. 72) you will note that in western Asia I list
some of the names of the western European industries, but with the
qualification “-like” (for example, “Gravettian-like”). The western
Asiatic blade-tool industries do vaguely recall some aspects of those
of western Europe, but we would probably be better off if we used
completely local names for them. The “Emiran” of my chart is such an
example; its industry includes a long spike-like blade point which has
no western European counterpart.
When we last spoke of Africa (p. 66), I told you that stone tools
there were continuing in the Levalloisian flake tradition, and were
becoming smaller. At some time during this process, two new tool
types appeared in northern Africa: one was the Aterian point with
a tang (p. 67), and the other was a sort of “laurel leaf” point,
called the “Sbaikian.” These two tool types were both produced from
flakes. The Sbaikian points, especially, are roughly similar to some
of the Solutrean points of Europe. It has been suggested that both the
Sbaikian and Aterian points may be seen on their way to France through
their appearance in the Spanish cave deposits of Parpallo, but there is
also a rival “pre-Solutrean” in central Europe. We still do not know
whether there was any contact between the makers of these north African
tools and the Solutrean tool-makers. What does seem clear is that the
blade-tool tradition itself arrived late in northern Africa.
NETHER AFRICA
Blade tools and “laurel leaf” points and some other probably late
stone tool types also appear in central and southern Africa. There
are geometric microliths on bladelets and even some coarse pottery in
east Africa. There is as yet no good way of telling just where these
items belong in time; in broad geological terms they are “late.”
Some people have guessed that they are as early as similar European
and Near Eastern examples, but I doubt it. The makers of small-sized
Levalloisian flake tools occupied much of Africa until very late in
time.
THE FAR EAST
India and the Far East still seem to be going their own way. In India,
some blade tools have been found. These are not well dated, save that
we believe they must be post-Pleistocene. In the Far East it looks as
if the old chopper-tool tradition was still continuing. For Burma,
Dr. Movius feels this is fairly certain; for China he feels even more
certain. Actually, we know very little about the Far East at about the
time of the last glaciation. This is a shame, too, as you will soon
agree.
THE NEW WORLD BECOMES INHABITED
At some time toward the end of the last great glaciation--almost
certainly after 20,000 years ago--people began to move over Bering
Strait, from Asia into America. As you know, the American Indians have
been assumed to be basically Mongoloids. New studies of blood group
types make this somewhat uncertain, but there is no doubt that the
ancestors of the American Indians came from Asia.
The stone-tool traditions of Europe, Africa, the Near and Middle East,
and central Siberia, did _not_ move into the New World. With only a
very few special or late exceptions, there are _no_ core-bifaces,
flakes, or blade tools of the Old World. Such things just haven’t been
found here.
This is why I say it’s a shame we don’t know more of the end of the
chopper-tool tradition in the Far East. According to Weidenreich,
the Mongoloids were in the Far East long before the end of the last
glaciation. If the genetics of the blood group types do demand a
non-Mongoloid ancestry for the American Indians, who else may have been
in the Far East 25,000 years ago? We know a little about the habits
for making stone tools which these first people brought with them,
and these habits don’t conform with those of the western Old World.
We’d better keep our eyes open for whatever happened to the end of
the chopper-tool tradition in northern China; already there are hints
that it lasted late there. Also we should watch future excavations
in eastern Siberia. Perhaps we shall find the chopper-tool tradition
spreading up that far.
THE NEW ERA
Perhaps it comes in part from the way I read the evidence and perhaps
in part it is only intuition, but I feel that the materials of this
chapter suggest a new era in the ways of life. Before about 40,000
years ago, people simply “gathered” their food, wandering over large
areas to scavenge or to hunt in a simple sort of way. But here we
have seen them “settling-in” more, perhaps restricting themselves in
their wanderings and adapting themselves to a given locality in more
intensive ways. This intensification might be suggested by the word
“collecting.” The ways of life we described in the earlier chapters
were “food-gathering” ways, but now an era of “food-collecting” has
begun. We shall see further intensifications of it in the next chapter.
End and PRELUDE
[Illustration]
Up to the end of the last glaciation, we prehistorians have a
relatively comfortable time schedule. The farther back we go the less
exact we can be about time and details. Elbow-room of five, ten,
even fifty or more thousands of years becomes available for us to
maneuver in as we work backward in time. But now our story has come
forward to the point where more exact methods of dating are at hand.
The radioactive carbon method reaches back into the span of the last
glaciation. There are other methods, developed by the geologists and
paleobotanists, which supplement and extend the usefulness of the
radioactive carbon dates. And, happily, as our means of being more
exact increases, our story grows more exciting. There are also more
details of culture for us to deal with, which add to the interest.
CHANGES AT THE END OF THE ICE AGE
The last great glaciation of the Ice Age was a two-part affair, with a
sub-phase at the end of the second part. In Europe the last sub-phase
of this glaciation commenced somewhere around 15,000 years ago. Then
the glaciers began to melt back, for the last time. Remember that
Professor Antevs (p. 19) isn’t sure the Ice Age is over yet! This
melting sometimes went by fits and starts, and the weather wasn’t
always changing for the better; but there was at least one time when
European weather was even better than it is now.
The melting back of the glaciers and the weather fluctuations caused
other changes, too. We know a fair amount about these changes in
Europe. In an earlier chapter, we said that the whole Ice Age was a
matter of continual change over long periods of time. As the last
glaciers began to melt back some interesting things happened to mankind.