THE BEGINNINGS OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION
65. Fossils of the body and of the mind.—66. Stone and
metals.—67. The Old and the New Stone Ages.—68. The Eolithic
Age.—69. The Palæolithic Age: duration, climate, animals.—70.
Subdivisions of the Palæolithic.—71. Human racial types
in the Palæolithic.—72. Palæolithic flint implements.—73.
Other materials: bone and horn.—74. Dress.—75. Harpoons and
weapons.—76. Wooden implements.—77. Fire.—78. Houses.—79.
Religion.—80. Palæolithic art.—81. Summary of advance in the
Palæolithic.
65. FOSSILS OF THE BODY AND OF THE MIND
The discovery of fossils has yielded some idea of the history of the
human body during the past million years. The evidence is far from
complete, but there is enough to prove a development much as might be
expected under the hypothesis of evolution. To some extent fossils also
afford an insight into the development of the human mind. The capacity of
a skull gives the size of the brain. The interior surface of the skull
corresponds to the outer surface of the brain. In this way some slight
knowledge has been gained of the development in ancient types of man
of the convolutions and centers of the brain surface with which mental
activity is associated. Even limb bones yield indirect indications. A
straight thigh means an erect posture of the body, with the arms no
longer used for locomotion. Released from this service, they are freed
for other purposes, such as grasping, handling, and various forms of what
we call work. But a hand adapted for work would be useless without an
intelligence to direct its operations. Thus the bones of our precursors
provide suggestions as to the degree of development of their minds. The
suggestions are sketchy and incomplete, but they are worth something.
A second line of evidence is fuller. When a human or pre-human hand
has made any article, one can judge from that article what its purpose
is likely to have been, how it was used, how much intelligence that
use involved, what degree of skill was necessary to manufacture the
article. All such artifacts—tools, weapons, or anything constructed—are
a reflection of the degree of “culture” or civilization, elementary or
advanced, possessed by the beings who made them.
On the whole the evidence to be got from artifacts as to the degree of
advancement of their makers or users is greater than the information
derivable from the structure of skeletons. A large brain does not
always imply high intelligence. Even a much convoluted brain surface
may accompany a mediocre mind. In other words, the correlation between
body and mind has not been worked out with accuracy. On the other hand
an advanced type of tool necessarily implies more skill in its use, and
therefore a decided development of the use of intelligence. Similarly, if
one finds nothing but simple tools occurring among any past or present
people, we may be sure that their civilization and the training of their
minds have remained backward.
It is true that one cannot always infer from a particular manufactured
object the mentality of the particular person who owned and used it.
An imbecile may come into possession of a good knife and even possess
some ability in using it. But he can acquire the knife only if there are
other individuals in his community or time who know how to smelt iron
and forge steel. In short, even a single jackknife is proof that human
ingenuity has progressed to the point of making important discoveries,
and that arts of relatively high order are being practised. In this way
a solitary implement, if its discovery is thoroughly authenticated, may
suffice to establish a relatively high or low degree of civilization for
a prehistoric period or a vanished race.
An implement manufactured by human hands of the past is of course
different from an actual fossil of a former human being, and it is always
necessary to distinguish between the two. The one is something made by
a human being and in some measure reflecting the development of his
intelligence; the other something left over or preserved from the human
body itself. Nevertheless, in a metaphorical sense, the implements of
the past may well be spoken of as the fossils of civilization. They are
only its fragments, but they allow us to reconstruct the mode of life of
prehistoric peoples and utterly forgotten nations, in much the same way
as the geologist and the palæontologist reconstruct from true fossils the
forms of life that existed on the earth or in the seas millions of years
ago.
There is even a further parallel. Just as the geologist knows that one
fossil is older or younger than another from its position in the earth’s
crust or the stratum in which it was laid down, so the student of the
beginnings of human civilization knows that the deposit at the bottom of
a cave must be more ancient than the refuse at the top. He calls in the
geologist to tell him the age of a glacial deposit or of a river terrace,
and thus he may learn that, of two types of implements found at different
places or levels, one is so many thousands of years or geological periods
older than the other. In the long run, too, the older implements prove
to be the simpler. Thus archæologists have succeeded in working out an
evolution of civilization which parallels rather neatly the evolution of
life forms. This evolution of human mental operations as it is reflected
in the artifacts preserved from the lowest and earliest strata of
civilization is the subject of the present chapter.
There is another way in which the evidence on the two lines of evolution
is similar: its incompleteness. The geological record has been compared
to a book from which whole chapters are missing; of others, but stray
leaves remain; and only now and then have consecutive pages been
preserved unmutilated. Humanity has always been so much less populous
than the remainder of the animal kingdom, especially in its earlier
stages, that the number of individuals whose bones have been preserved
as fossils is infinitely smaller. The result is that we account
ourselves fortunate in having been able to assemble six or seven not
quite complete skeletons, and fragmentary portions of two or three dozen
other individuals, of the Neandertal race which inhabited western Europe
for thousands of years. For still earlier races or species of man the
actual data are even scantier. Knowledge of so fundamental a form as
Pithecanthropus, the earliest of the antecedents of man yet known, rests
on two bones and two teeth, plus a third tooth discovered as the sole
result of a subsequent expedition. Heidelberg man has to be reconstructed
from a jaw.
The remains which illustrate the development of the human mind are not so
scarce. A single man might easily manufacture hundreds or even thousands
of implements in the course of a lifetime. When these are of stone
they are practically imperishable; whereas it is only the exceptional
skeleton, protected by favorable circumstances, of which the bones will
endure for thousands of years. For every ancient true fossil trace of
man that has been found, we have therefore thousands of the works of his
hands.
The inadequateness of the cultural record is not in the insufficient
number of the specimens, but in their onesidedness. Objects of stone,
even those of horn and of metal, last; clothing, fabrics, skins,
basketry, and wooden articles ordinarily decay so rapidly as to have
no chance of being preserved for tens of thousands of years. Tools of
the most ancient times have often been found in abundance; objects
manufactured with tools from softer and less enduring materials
are scarce even from moderately old periods. Now and then a piece
of an earthenware pot may show the imprint of a textile. Textiles
and foodstuffs are occasionally preserved by charring in fire or by
penetration of metallic salts. Charcoal or ashes found in pockets or beds
indicate that fire was maintained in one spot for considerable periods,
and must therefore have been controlled and used, possibly even produced,
by human agency. A bone needle with an eye proves that some one must have
sewn, and one may therefore assume that garments were worn at the time.
But for every point established in this way there are dozens about which
knowledge remains blank.
Understanding of the social and religious life of the earliest men is
naturally filled with the greatest gaps, and the farther back one goes in
time, the greater is the enveloping darkness. The problem is as difficult
as that of figuring accurately the degree of intelligence attained by the
mailed fishes of the Devonian age some thirty or forty million years ago,
or of estimating whether the complexion of Pithecanthropus was black,
brown, or white. One can guess on these matters. One may by careful
comparisons obtain some partial and indirect indication of an answer. But
it is clearly wisest not to try to stretch too far the conclusions which
can be drawn. Imagination has its value in science as in art and other
aspects of life, yet when it becomes disproportionate to the facts, it is
a danger instead of an aid.
Still, now and then something has been preserved from which one may draw
inferences with a reasonable prospect of certainty even concerning the
non-material side of life. If human bones are discovered charred and
split open, there is good reason for believing these bones to be the
remains of a cannibal feast. When prehistoric skeletons are found in the
position in which death might have taken place, the presumption is that
the people of that time abandoned their dead as animals would. If on the
other hand a skeleton lies intact with its arms carefully folded, there
is little room for doubt that the men of the time had progressed to the
point where the survivors put away their dead; in other words, that human
burial had been instituted, and that accordingly at least some rude form
of society was in existence. When, perhaps from a still later period, a
skeleton is found with red paint adhering to the bones, although these
lie in their natural places, the only conclusion to be drawn is that the
dead body was coated with pigment before being interred and that as the
soft tissues wasted away the red ocher came to adhere to the bones. In
this case the painting was evidently part of a rite performed over the
dead.
66. STONE AND METALS
The cultural record of man’s existence is divided into two great periods.
In the latter of these, in which we are still living, metals were used;
in the earlier, metals were unknown and tools made of stone. Hence the
terms “Age of Stone” and “Age of Metals.” The duration of these two main
periods is unequal. Metals were first used in Asia and Egypt about 4,000
B.C. and in Europe about 3,000 B.C.—say five to six thousand years ago.
The most conservative authorities, however, would allow forty or fifty
thousand years for the Stone Age; while others make it cover a quarter
million. The assumption, which is here followed, of the intermediate
figure of a hundred thousand years gives the Stone Age a duration twenty
times as long as the Age of Metals. When one remembers that hand in
hand with metals came the art of writing and an infinite variety of
inventions, it is clear that larger additions have been made to human
civilization in the comparatively brief period of metals than in the
tremendously longer time that preceded it. Progress in the Stone Age was
not only slow, but the farther back one peers into this age, the more
lagging does the evolution of human culture seem to have been. One can
definitely recognize a tendency toward the acceleration of evolution: the
farther advancement has got the faster it moves.
The Age of Metals is subdivided into the Iron Age, which begins some
three thousand years ago, say about 1,500-1,000 B.C.; and an earlier
Bronze Age. In the Bronze Age one must distinguish first a period in
which native copper was employed in some parts of the world; after which
comes an era in which it had been learned that copper melted with a
proportion of about one-tenth tin, thus producing bronze, was a superior
material. Within the past five thousand years or so, accordingly, there
are recognized successively the ages of copper, of bronze, and of iron.
Broadly speaking, these five thousand years are also the historic period.
Not that there exist historic records going back so far as this for every
people. But the earliest preserved documents that the historian uses, the
written monuments of Egypt and Babylonia, are about five thousand years
old. The Age of Metals thus corresponds approximately with the period of
History; the Stone Age, with Prehistory.
67. THE OLD AND THE NEW STONE AGES
The Stone Age, apart from a rather doubtful introductory era to be
mentioned presently, is customarily divided into two periods, the Old
Stone Age and the New Stone Age,—the Palæolithic and the Neolithic.
These words of Greek origin mean literally “old stone” and “new stone”
periods. The criterion by which these two grand divisions were originally
distinguished was that in the Palæolithic artifacts were made only by
chipping, that is, some process of fracturing stone, whereas Neolithic
stone objects were thought to have been pecked, ground, rubbed, and
polished. Indeed the two periods have sometimes been designated as the
epochs of rough stone and polished stone implements.
This distinction is now known to be inaccurate. It is true that the Old
Stone Age did not yet employ frictional processes in shaping stone and
confined itself to the older methods of fracturing by blows or pressure.
But the converse is not true, that the Neolithic worked stone only
by grinding, nor even that grinding was its characteristic process.
Stone grinding was invented only toward the middle of the New Stone
Age—in what is perhaps best designated the “Full Neolithic.” The Early
Neolithic, which lasted half the total Neolithic duration, continued to
work stone by fracture. What marked the beginning of the Neolithic was
certain inventions having nothing to do with stone: notably pottery and
the bow. With these available, human life took on a new color, and it
was not until some thousands of years later that shaping of stone by
grinding came into use. In other words, the prehistorians’ idea as to
what constitutes the Neolithic have changed, and they no longer put stone
processes in the first place in characterizing the period. They would do
well, therefore, to change its name also to one having reference to its
more specific traits. Such a change of designation will perhaps become
established in time. But at present the term Neolithic is so intrenched
in usage, that to replace it by “Pottery Age” or “Bow Age” would be
misleading: all the literature on the subject employs “Neolithic.” The
present chapter being concerned specifically with the Palæolithic, and
this being an age in which stone implements did loom large and were
consistently made by fracture only, the difficulties about the concept
of the Neolithic, and its subdivision into an Early and a Full period,
can be reserved for discussion later (Chapter XIV). But it is well to
bear in mind as the Palæolithic is examined in the pages immediately
following, that the Neolithic is neither its antithesis nor its logical
complement, but rather a period signalized by the appearance of totally
new directions of human culture.
Another point in connection with the two processes of working stone has
reference to the mental activities involved by them. A tolerable ground
ax or mortar can be made without much difficulty by any one willing
to take the trouble. A civilized person entirely inexperienced in
the working of stone would be likely to produce a fairly satisfactory
implement by the rubbing technique. If however he attempted to
manufacture a chipped stone tool, even of simple type, he would probably
fail repeatedly before learning to control the method well enough to turn
out an implement without first ruining a dozen. In short, the manual
dexterity required to produce the best forms of chipped stone tools
is greater than that needed for ground ones. Inasmuch as the chipping
process is, however, the earlier, we are confronted here with a paradox.
Yet the paradox is only on the surface. It is true that so far as skill
alone is concerned a good chipped tool is more difficult to make than
a ground one. But it can be made in a shorter time. A rough stone tool
can be manufactured in a few minutes. A good artifact may be preceded
by a number of unsuccessful attempts or “rejects,” and yet be produced
in an hour or less. The processes of pecking, grinding, and polishing,
on the other hand, are laborious. They are slow even when pursued with
steel tools, and when the shaping material is no better than another
stone or sand, as was of course always the case in prehistoric times,
the duration of the labor must have been discouraging. Weeks or at least
days would be required to manufacture a single implement. If the work was
done at odd times, one may imagine that many a stone ax was months in
being produced. Patience and forethought of a rather high order are thus
involved in the making of implements of the Neolithic type. Dexterity is
replaced by higher qualities of what might be called the moral order. By
comparison, the earliest men lacked these traits. They would not sit down
to-day to commence something that would not be available for use until
a month later. What they wanted they wanted quickly. To think ahead, to
sacrifice present convenience to future advantage, must have been foreign
to their way of life. Therefore they chipped; and although in the lapse
of thousands of years they learned to do some chipping of high quality,
they continued to operate with modifications of the same rough and rapid
process. The uses to which their implements could be put were also
correspondingly restricted. A first-class ax, a real chisel, or a mortar
in which grinding can be done, can scarcely be made by chipping alone.
It was not until men had learned to restrain their childish impulse
to work only for the immediate purpose, and had acquired an increased
self-control and discipline, that the grinding of stone came into use.
One principle must be clearly adhered to in the dating or proper
arrangement of the periods of prehistoric time: the principle that it
is always the highest types of implements which determine the age of
a deposit. Lower forms often persist from the earlier periods into
the later, alongside the newly invented higher types. The men of the
Full Neolithic time did not wholly give up making chipped implements
because they also ground stone. Just so we have not discarded the use
of stone because we use metals, and we still employ copper for a great
variety of purposes although we live in an age of which iron and steel
are characteristic. To reckon a people as Palæolithic because they had
chipped implements as well as ground ones, would be as misleading as to
assert that we still belong to the Stone Age because we build houses of
granite. In fact, stone masonry has had its principal development since
metals have been in use.
This caution seems elementary enough. But it has sometimes been
overlooked by scholars in the pursuit of a theory that made them try to
stamp some prehistoric or savage race as particularly primitive. If in
a stratum of ancient remains there are discovered a thousand chipped
artifacts and only ten that are ground or polished but the latter
unquestionably left there at the same time as the thousand chipped ones,
one is justified in reckoning the whole deposit as Full Neolithic in
period. For in such a case it is clear that the art of grinding must have
been already known, even though it may as yet have been practised only
occasionally.
It is found that all surviving peoples of primitive culture—American
Indians, Australian black-fellows, Polynesians, Hottentots, and the
like—except probably the Tasmanians, have attained the grinding stage of
development. It is true enough that many American Indian tribes chipped
arrow-points and knives more frequently than they would grind out axes.
Yet without exception they also knew the process of grinding stone and
applied it to some purpose. For this reason the endeavors that have been
made by certain authors, who compare particular modern savage peoples
to the races of prehistoric Europe on the basis of a similarity of their
chipped implements, are misleading. It is true that tools like those
produced in the Mousterian period of the Old Stone Age are made by the
modern Australian tribes, and that certain Magdalenian implements from
near the end of the Old Stone Age find parallels among those of the
Eskimo. But both the Australians and the Eskimo practise the art of
rubbing and polishing of stone, which was unknown in the Palæolithic.
They therefore belong clearly to a later stage of civilization. Too great
an insistence on such parallels would be likely to give rise to the
implication that the Australians were a species of belated Mousterian
Stone Age men, and the Eskimo only Magdalenians whom the Arctic
regions had somehow perpetuated for ten thousand years; whereas their
civilizations consist of Mousterian and Magdalenian ingredients plus many
subsequent elements. The stage of development of the art of chipping in
stone may be the same; the other arts and customs of modern Australian
black-fellows and of Eskimos, and their bodily types, differ from those
of the prehistoric Europeans.
With the distinction of the Palæolithic, Neolithic, and the Ages of
Copper, Bronze, and Iron in mind, it is in order to examine what may have
preceded them, and then to trace in outline the development which human
culture underwent during the Palæolithic in the continent in which its
records are best explored—Europe.
68. THE EOLITHIC AGE
The earliest of all periods of human handiwork, although a somewhat
doubtful one, is the Eolithic, or age of the “dawn of stone” implements.
On purely theoretical grounds it appears likely, indeed almost
inevitable, that the first definitely chipped implements did not develop
full-fledged, but were preceded by still cruder tools, made perhaps
without clear intent, and at any rate so rough and half-shaped that they
would be difficult to recognize.
After the evolution of Palæolithic implements had become pretty well
known, this conjecture began to be supported by evidence, or at least
by alleged evidence. Investigators, especially Rutot in Belgium, found
flints of which it was difficult to say whether or not they had been used
by human hands. These pieces occurred in extremely ancient deposits.
On the basis of these discoveries Rutot and his followers established
the Eolithic period. Some have consistently assailed this Eolithic age
as imaginary, asserting that the so-called eoliths were nothing but
accidental products of nature. Others have accepted the eoliths and
recognize the stage of embryonic or pre-human civilization which they
imply. Still other students remain in doubt; and their attitude is
perhaps still the safest to share.
The view now most prevalent is that the alleged Eolithic flints may have
been used by early human hands, but that they were almost certainly not
manufactured. This would make them tools only in the sense in which the
limb of a tree is a tool when a man in distress seizes it to defend
himself.
The eoliths are more or less irregular pieces of flint or similar stone,
some of them so blunt that they must have been very inefficient if used
for chopping or cutting or scraping. Small nocks or chips along the edge
are believed not to have been flaked off with the conscious intent of
producing an edge, but to have become chipped away through usage while
the stone was being manipulated as a naturally formed tool. This would
be much in line with our picking up a cobblestone in default of an ax
or hammer, and continuing to maul away with it until the rough handling
broke off several pieces and happened accidentally to produce an edge.
That the eoliths were such unintentionally made tools is the most that
can safely be claimed for them.
Even so some doubts remain. Stones similar to eoliths in every respect,
except that their fractures show a fresher appearance, have been taken by
dozens out of modern steel drums in which flint-bearing chalk was being
broken for industrial purposes.
Then, too, the first believers in the authenticity of the eoliths
reported them as occurring from the middle and earlier layers of the
Pleistocene, in which periods we know that nearly human or half-human
types like Heidelberg man and Pithecanthropus were already in existence.
These two species being more similar to modern man than to the apes or
other animals, we must imagine them to have been gifted with at least
some human intelligence. It would therefore have been entirely possible
for them to supplement the tools with which nature endowed them—their
hands and teeth—with flints which they picked up and manipulated in one
useful way or another without particularly troubling to shape the stones.
So far the argument is all in favor of the reality of the eolith. Before
long, however, it was discovered that eoliths were not especially more
abundant in the middle Pleistocene just previous to the opening of the
Palæolithic, when we should expect them to have been most numerous, than
they were in the early Pleistocene, when the human species must still
have been most rudimentary. Then it was found that eoliths occur in lower
strata than the earliest Pleistocene, namely, in the Pliocene, in the
Miocene, and perhaps even earlier, in the Oligocene. Yet these periods
are divisions of the Tertiary, or Age of Mammals—the age before man had
been evolved! In short, the argument cuts too far. Once one begins to
accept eoliths it is difficult to stop accepting them without carrying
them back into a period of geological history when evolution could
scarcely have produced a form sufficiently advanced in intelligence to
use them.[8]
Perhaps on the whole the strongest argument in favor of the authenticity
of the Pleistocene eoliths is the fact that the first implements known
positively to belong to the Old Stone Age are just a little too well
shaped and efficient to represent the products of the very beginnings of
human manual dexterity. One cannot help but look for something antecedent
that was simpler and ruder; and this need of the imagination the eoliths
do go a long way to satisfy.
69. THE PALÆOLITHIC AGE: DURATION, CLIMATE, ANIMALS
With the Eolithic period passed and the Palæolithic entered, our history
of incipient human culture is on a solid foundation, especially so far
as western Europe, the best explored region, is concerned. The general
relation of this Old Stone Age in geological time may be defined as
follows. The Quaternary, whose duration may be estimated to have been
about a million years, is subdivided into the Pleistocene and the Recent.
Of the two, the Recent is very much shorter than the Pleistocene. Broadly
speaking, from ninety-eight to ninety-nine per cent of the total duration
of the Quaternary was occupied by the Pleistocene. The small remainder
which the geologist calls “Recent,” corresponds to those periods which
the archæologist and the historian name the New Stone and Metal Ages; say
the past ten thousand years. The Old Stone Age therefore falls in the
Pleistocene. But it occupies only the later duration of the Pleistocene;
the earlier part of the Pleistocene is barren of tools or other records
of human culture, except so far as the eoliths may be so considered.
The proportion of the Pleistocene which is covered by the Old Stone Age
is variously estimated. Some geologists will not allow the undisputed
Palæolithic to have extended over more than the last tenth of the
Pleistocene: the rivers have not changed their beds enough to permit the
assumption of a longer period. This allowance would give the Palæolithic
a duration of perhaps a hundred thousand years, which is the figure here
followed. Those who place the beginning of the European Palæolithic in
the second instead of the third interglacial period, would have to admit
a considerably longer duration.
The geologist, because he deals with such enormous durations, has to
operate on a broad-gauge scale, and usually disdains to commit himself
to close estimates of years. To measure the lapse of time within the
Pleistocene, he has found it most useful to avail himself of the
evidences left by the great glaciers which repeatedly covered parts of
several continents during the Pleistocene, and he has therefore given
this period its popular name of “glacial epoch.” These glaciations must
be imagined as having occurred on a much larger scale than one might at
first infer from the shrunken remnants of the glaciers that persist in
the Alps and other mountains. The Pleistocene glaciers were vast sheets,
hundreds of feet in thickness, sliding uniformly over valleys, hills, and
mountains except for an occasional high peak. Modern Greenland, which
except at the edges is buried under a solid ice cap, evidently presents
a pretty fair picture of what the northern parts of Europe and North
America repeatedly looked like during the Pleistocene.
Four such glaciations, or periods of maximum extent of the continental
ice, have been distinguished, and more or less correlated, in Europe and
North America. In Europe they have been designated as the Günz, Mindel,
Riss, and Würm glaciations respectively (Fig. 5). Each of these is the
name of a locality in the Alps at which typical moraines or erosions
produced by the ice of that period have been carefully observed.
Between these four successive advances of the ice sheets there fell
more temperate eras, some of them rather arid, and others moist and
almost tropical even in the latitude of Europe. These mild intervals
are known as the interglacial periods. That Europe was free from ice
during these interglacial periods is shown not only by facts of a purely
geological nature but by the occurrence in these periods of fossils of a
semi-tropical fauna which included elephants, rhinoceroses, lions, and
the like.
Coming now to a consideration of the relation of man to these ice eras,
we find that the first, second, and probably the third glaciations passed
without leaving sure evidence of manufactured stone implements. In the
last interglacial period, that which falls between the Riss and the
Würm glaciations, the so-called “Chellean picks” appear; and from then
on the record of artifacts is a continuous one. Considerable parts of
Europe remained habitable all through the fourth and last glaciation,
the Würm period, as the implements discovered prove. Gradually, although
irregularly and with three minor advances and recessions, always
diminishing in rigor, however, this last predominance of the ice died
away; until, by the time its effects had wholly disappeared, and the
geologically “Recent” era was inaugurated, human civilization had evolved
to a point where it began to enter the New Stone Age.
The animals whose fossils are found in the same deposits with human
skeletons and artifacts have been of the greatest assistance in the
determination of the periods of such remains. The fossils are partly
of extinct species until toward the very end of the Pleistocene, when
exclusively living types of animals begin wholly to supersede the
earlier ones. While the identification of the various species, and
the fixation of the age of each, is the work of the specialist in
palæontology, the results of such studies are all-important to the
historian of man’s beginnings, because they help to determine chronology.
If artifacts are found in association with fossil remains of an extinct
animal such as the mammoth or the woolly rhinoceros, they are obviously
older than artifacts that are accompanied only by the bones of the
reindeer, the dog, or other living species. For this reason, although the
history of mammalian life in the past is a science in itself, it also has
close relations with human prehistory. Some of the most characteristic
animals of the later Pleistocene, and the successive stages of human
cultural development with which they were associated, are listed on the
following page.
70. SUBDIVISIONS OF THE PALÆOLITHIC
The places at which the men of the Stone Age lived and where their
debris accumulated are known as “stations.” The word was first employed
in this sense in French, but has been taken over into other languages.
A “station” then is simply a spot at which prehistoric remains of human
occupation are found. At least a thousand of these have been discovered
in western Europe. In general they divide into two classes. One kind
is in the open, mostly in the gravels laid down by streams. These are
therefore known as “River Drift” or simply “Drift” stations. The other
kind is found in caves or under sheltering rocks. The majority of Drift
stations have proved to be from the earlier or Lower Palæolithic, whereas
the Cave stations date mostly from the later or Upper Palæolithic. The
Drift and the Cave periods are therefore often distinguished within the
Old Stone Age, especially by English archæologists. French, German,
and American students generally use the terms “Lower Palæolithic”
and “Upper Palæolithic,” whose reference is to periods of cultural
development rather than type of locality inhabited, and which carry more
significance. French archæologists also speak of the Upper Palæolithic as
the Reindeer Age.
THE LATER GLACIAL FAUNA OF WESTERN EUROPE
(Read upward)
_Postglacial and Recent_:
Bison, _Bison priscus_.
Wild cattle, _Bos primigenius_.
Red deer or stag, _Cervus elaphus_.
Roe-deer, _Capreolus_.
Reindeer, _Rangifer tarandus_.
Wild boar, _Sus scrofa_.
_Fourth Glacial and Postglacial fauna_: typically Mousterian to
Magdalenian:
Woolly mammoth, _Elephas primigenius_.
Woolly or Siberian rhinoceros, _Rhinoceros antiquitatis_.
Cave lion, _Felis leo spelaea_.
Cave hyaena, _Hyaena crocuta spelaea_.
Cave bear, _Ursus spelaeus_.
Horse, _Equus caballus_.
Ibex.
Banded lemming, _Myodes torquatus_.
_Third Interglacial fauna_: typically Chellean and Acheulean:
Straight-tusked elephant, _Elephas antiquus_.
Broad-nosed rhinoceros, _Rhinoceros Merckii_.
Lion, _Felis leo antiqua_.
Spotted hyaena, _Hyaena crocuta_.
Brown bear, _Ursus arctos_.
Horses, probably several varieties.
_Second Interglacial Fauna_: typically Pre-Palæolithic, but in part
surviving into the Chellean in favored localities:
Southern mammoth, _Elephas meridionalis_.
Etruscan rhinoceros, _Rhinoceros etruscus_.
_Hippopotamus major_.
Saber-tooth tigers, _Machaerodus_.
Striped hyaena, _Hyaena striata_.
Steno’s horse, _Equus stenonis_.
_Bison antiquus_.
Mastodon, tapir, anthropoids, and all primates but man and the
macaque monkey already extinct in Western Europe.
The student who perhaps contributed most to the foundation of knowledge
of the Palæolithic period was Gabriel de Mortillet. He first recognized
four distinct sub-periods of the Palæolithic, each possessing its
distinctive kinds of implements. These four periods, each named after
one particular “station,” are the Chellean or earliest; the Mousterian;
the Solutrean; and the Magdalenian or latest. These derived their
designations from the four stations of Chelles in northern France, and of
Le Moustier, Solutré, and La Madeleine in southern France (Fig. 16). De
Mortillet did not endeavor to relate the culture of each of these four
periods wholly to the particular locality for which he named it. He chose
the stations as typical and included others as belonging to the same eras.
[Illustration: FIG. 16. Type stations of the Palæolithic periods. (After
Osborn.)]
As more implements were found and studied, it was recognized, in part by
de Mortillet himself, that while his original classification was sound,
it was also incomplete. Two other periods had to be admitted. One of
these, the Acheulean, falls before the Mousterian, and the second, the
Aurignacian, after it. This makes six periods within the Old Stone Age;
and these have been adopted by all students of the prehistory of man in
Europe. The first three, the Chellean, Acheulean, and Mousterian, make
up the Lower Palæolithic; the last three, the Aurignacian, Solutrean,
and Magdalenian, constitute the Upper Palæolithic or Reindeer Age. These
six divisions of the Old Stone Age are so essential to an understanding
of the prehistory of man, that the serious student finds it necessary to
know their names and sequence automatically.
71. HUMAN RACIAL TYPES IN THE PALÆOLITHIC
When it comes to defining the types of fossil man in the Palæolithic,
a curious situation develops. Long before there was even a true Stone
Age, in the early and middle Pleistocene, there lived the half-human
Pithecanthropus and the primitively human Heidelberg race (§ 11, 12).
But for the whole first part of the Palæolithic, throughout the Chellean
and Acheulean, no undisputed find of any skeletal remains has yet been
made, although thousands of implements have been discovered which are
undoubtedly human products.[9]
In the present state of knowledge the strongest case is that for the
skull found at Piltdown in southern England. This is said to have been
associated with “Pre-Chellean” tools, which would seem to establish
the Piltdown type as the race that lived about the beginning of the
Palæolithic (§ 13). But the deposit at Piltdown had been more or less
rolled or shifted by natural agencies before its discovery, so that
its age is not so certain as it might be; and there is no unanimity of
opinion as to whether the highly developed skull and the excessively
ape-like jaw that were found in the deposit really belong together. With
this doubt about the fossil itself, it seems most reasonable not to press
too strongly its identification as the type of man that lived in Europe
at the commencement of the Old Stone Age.
For the end of the Lower Palæolithic, in the Mousterian, conditions
change, and skeletal remains become authentic and comparatively numerous.
From this period date the skeletons of the Neandertal species of man:
a short, thickset race, powerful in bones and musculature, slightly
stooping at the knee and at the shoulder, with a thick neck and a large
head (§ 14). The brain was about as large as that of modern man, but the
retreating aspect of the forehead was accentuated by heavy brow ridges.
In the Upper Palæolithic the Neandertal species has disappeared. The
first precursors of Homo sapiens, or modern man, have come on the
scene. A sort of transition from Neandertal man may be presented by the
Brünn type, but the prevailing race in western Europe during the Upper
Palæolithic period is that of Cro-Magnon, a tall, lithe, well-formed
people, as agile and swift as Neandertal man was stocky and strong. The
head and features were well proportioned, the skull and brain remarkably
large, the general type not inferior to modern man, and probably already
proto-Caucasian (§ 16).
Grimaldi man, so far known only from one spot on the Mediterranean shore
of Europe, was proto-Negroid, Aurignacian in period, and therefore partly
contemporaneous with the Cro-Magnon race (§ 18).
In summary, the types of man in Europe during the Old Stone Age have been
as follows:
Magdalenian Cro-Magnon
Solutrean Cro-Magnon; Brünn
Aurignacian Cro-Magnon (Caucasian); also, locally Grimaldi (Negroid)
Mousterian Neandertal (possibly without living descendants)
Acheulean Unknown
Chellean Unknown; Piltdown perhaps Pre-Chellean
The interrelations of geology, glaciation, human types, periods of the
Stone Age, and estimated time in years are brought together in the tables
“Antiquity of Man” and “Prehistory” (Figs. 5 and 17.)[10]
[Illustration: FIG. 17. Earliest Prehistory of Europe. This table is
an elaboration of the upper portion of Figure 5. Equal lapses of time
are indicated by equal vertical distances. The general acceleration of
development is evident.]
72. PALÆOLITHIC FLINT IMPLEMENTS
The most important line of evidence as to the gradual development of
civilization through the six periods of the Old Stone Age is the series
of flint tools. Hundreds of thousands of these tools have been discovered
in western, central, and southern Europe—perhaps millions. At St.
Acheul were found 20,000 Chellean coups-de-poing; at Solutré, below the
Solutrean layer, 35,000 Mousterian-Aurignacian worked flints besides the
remains of 100,000 horses; at Grimaldi in Italy, in the Grotte du Prince,
20,000 Mousterian pieces; at Schweizersbild in Switzerland, 14,000 late
Magdalenian implements, and at Kesslerloch, near by, 30,000 from the late
Solutrean and Magdalenian; at Hundsteig in Austria, 20,000 Aurignacian
flints; at Predmost in Czecho-Slovakia, 25,000 probably of Solutrean age.
Stations of such richness are not particularly rare, and the stations are
numerous. In France alone 500 Magdalenian stations have been determined.
Clear stratigraphic relations have also been observed again and again. A
few examples are:
Castillo Cave, Santander, Spain, implement bearing layers
separated by strata of sterile natural debris: 1, Acheulean; 2,
3, 4, early, middle, and late Mousterian; 5, early Aurignacian;
6, 7, 8, late Aurignacian; 9, Solutrean; 10, 11, early and late
Magdalenian; 12, Azilian; 13, Copper.
At St. Acheul: 1, limestone; 2, gravel, early Chellean; 3,
sand, late Chellean; 4, loam, early Acheulean; 5, flood sand;
6, loess; 7, late Acheulean; 8, pebbles, Mousterian; 9, loess;
10, Upper Palæolithic.
At Mas d’Azil, at the foot of the Pyrenees: 1, gravelly soil;
2, middle Magdalenian; 3, flood loam; 4, upper Magdalenian; 5,
flood loam; 6, Azilian; 7, early Neolithic; 8, full Neolithic
and Bronze; 9, Iron.
At Ofnet cave, Bavaria: 1, rocks; 2, sand, 65 cm. deep; 3, 4,
Aurignacian, 20 cm.; 5, Solutrean, 20 cm.; 6, Magdalenian,
15-20 cm.; 7, Azilian, with two nests of skulls, 5 cm.; 8,
Neolithic, 53 cm.; 9, Bronze and Iron, 32 cm.
At La Ferrassie cave: 1, rocks and sand, 40 cm. deep; 2,
Acheulean, 50 cm.; 3, Mousterian, with skeleton, 50 cm.; 4,
early Aurignacian, 20 cm.; 5, middle Aurignacian, 50 cm.; 6,
rock fragments, 35 cm.; 7, late Aurignacian, 35 cm.; rock and
soil, 120 cm.
At first inspection Palæolithic relics seem scarcely distinguishable.
They are all of flint, chert, or similar stone; are all chipped and
therefore more or less rough, and consist of forms meant for cutting,
scraping, and piercing. But a closer examination reveals differences
in their shapes and fundamental differences in the method of their
manufacture. The technique employed in the fashioning of artifacts is
more significant than their appearance, and it is by directing attention
to the process that one can classify these “fossils of civilization” with
accuracy.
_Chellean._—In the Chellean period there was made substantially one
type of implement, a sort of rude pick, almond or wedge shaped. It is
often somewhat pointed, although rarely very sharp. The butt end may be
rounded, some of the original surface of the cobble or nodule of flint
being left for convenience of the hand in grasping the implement (Fig.
18, _a_). This tool is known as the “Chellean pick.” The Germans often
call it _faust-keil_ or “fist wedge” and the French have coined the
expressive epithet _coup-de-poing_ or “blow of the fist.” The Chellean
pick averages from four to six inches in length, somewhat less in
breadth, and weighs perhaps from a quarter to a full pound. It would have
made an effective rude weapon. When firmly grasped and well directed,
it could easily crush a skull. It might serve to split wood, hack limbs
from trees, butcher large game, and perhaps roughly dress hides. It would
not do any one of these things with neatness and accuracy, but neatness
and accuracy were qualities to which early Palæolithic men paid little
attention. This universal Chellean tool may be described as a combined
knife, saw, ax, scraper, and pick, performing the various functions of
these implements with notable crudities but efficiently enough when
wielded with muscular strength.
The Chellean pick was made by striking a round or oval nodule of flint
with another stone and knocking off pieces. Most of the detached flakes
were large, as shown by the surfaces from which they came off; perhaps
most of the chips averaged a square inch. Anything like fine work or
evenness of outline was therefore out of question. One can imagine that
many tools were spoiled, or broken in two, by the knocks to which they
were subjected in their manufacture. The flakes struck off fell to the
ground and were discarded. If the workman was sufficiently skilful,
and luck stayed with him, he would before long be holding the sort of
implement that has been described. Not more than a few dozen strokes of
the hammer stone would be required to produce it.
[Illustration: FIG. 18. Stone implements illustrating the principal
types of Palæolithic chipping. _a_, Chellean pick, a roughly flaked core;
_b_, Mousterian scraper, a flake with retouched edge; _c_, Solutrean
blade, evened by retouching over its entire surface; _d_, Magdalenian
knife, a flake detached at one blow. For comparison, _e_, an obsidian
knife or razor from Mexico, made by the same process as _d_.]
Some attempt has been made to distinguish variant forms of Chellean
tools, such as scrapers, planers, and knives. But some of these
identifications of particular types are uncertain, and at best, the
differences between the types are slight. It may be said with approximate
accuracy that the long Chellean period possessed only the one tool; that
this is the first definitely shaped tool known to have been made by human
hands; and that it is therefore the concrete evidence of the first stage
of that long development which we call civilization.[11]
_Acheulean._—The Acheulean period brings to light a growing
specialization of forms and some new types. Rude scrapers, knives,
borers, can be distinguished. The flakes struck off are finer than in the
Chellean and the general workmanship averages higher; but through the
whole of the Acheulean there is no new process. The Chellean methods of
manufacture are improved without an invention being added to them.
_Mousterian._—In the Mousterian period a retrogression would at first
sight seem to have occurred. Tools become smaller, less regular in
outline, and are worked on one side only. The whole Mousterian period
scarcely presents a single new type of implement of such all-around
serviceability as the Chellean pick. Nevertheless the degeneration is
only in the appearance of the implements. Actually they are made by a
new process, which is more advanced than that followed in the Chellean
and Acheulean. In these earlier periods flakes were struck off until the
kernel of stone that remained was of the shape desired for the tool. The
Mousterian technique is distinguished by using the flake instead of the
core. This is the cause of Mousterian tools being generally smaller and
lighter.
Secondly, when the flake dulled by use, its edge was renewed by fine
chipping. The pieces detached in this secondary chipping are so small
that it would have been difficult to knock them off and maintain any
regularity of edge, for to detach a chip by a blow means violent contact.
If the blow is a bit feeble, the chip that comes off is too small. If
the artifact is struck too hard, too large a chip flies off and the
implement is ruined. Fine chips are better worked off by pressure than
by impact. A point is laid upon the surface near the edge. When this
point is pressed down at the proper angle and with proper firmness, a
scale flies off. With some practice the scales can be detached almost
equal in size. The point may be of softer material than the stone. It is
in the nature of flint, and of all stones that approach glass in their
structure, that they break easily under pressure in definite planes or
surfaces. Modern tribes that still work flint generally employ as a
pressing tool a piece of bone or horn which comes to a somewhat rounded
point. This is usually attached to the end of a stick, to enable a better
grip of the working tool, the butt end being clamped under the elbow.
A tool of the same sort may have been employed in the Palæolithic. The
process of detaching the scales or secondary flakes by pressure is known
as “retouching.” Retouching allows finer control than strokes delivered
with a stone. The result is that Mousterian implements, when at their
best, possess truer edges, and also greater variety of forms adapted to
particular uses, than those of preceding ages (Fig. 18, _b_).
In spite of their insignificant appearance, Mousterian tools accordingly
show advance in two points. First, the flake is used. Secondly, two
processes instead of one are followed; the knocking off of the flake
followed by its retouching.
_Aurignacian._—With the Mousterian the Lower Palæolithic has ended.
In several activities of life, such as art and religion, the Upper
Palæolithic represents a great advance over the Lower Palæolithic. Yet it
seems that the mental energies of the Aurignacian people must have been
pretty well absorbed by their new occupations and inventions, for their
tools are largely the same retouched flakes as those the Mousterian had
already employed. The Aurignacian carried on the stone technique of the
Mousterian much as the Acheulean previously had carried on that of the
Chellean.
_Solutrean._—The Solutrean seems to have been a relatively brief period,
and to have remained localized, for implements dating from it are the
scarcest of any from the six divisions of the Old Stone Age. There was
a distinct advance of interest in stone work during the Solutrean.
The process of retouching, without being fundamentally altered, was
evidently much better controlled than before. The best Solutrean workers
were retouching both sides of their tools instead of one side only, as
in the past, and working over not only the edge or point but the entire
surface of their artifacts. One of the characteristic implements of their
time was a laurel-leaf-shaped blade which has often been considered a
spear point, but would also have been an effective knife and may often
have been used as such. This has the surface of both sides, from tip
to butt, finished in even retouching, and is equaled in excellence of
workmanship only by the best of the spear points chipped by modern
savages (Fig. 18, _c_).
Of course this was not the only stone implement which the Solutrean
people knew. They made points with a single shoulder at the butt, as
if for mounting, and had crude forms which represented the types of
earlier periods. This partial conservatism is in accord with the general
observation already stated, that lower types tend to persist even after
higher ones have been invented; and that because a period is determined
by its best products it by no means follows that simpler ones are lacking.
_Magdalenian._—The sixth period of the Old Stone Age, the Magdalenian,
resembles the Mousterian in seeming at first glance to show a retrograde
development. The retouching process was carried out with less skill,
perhaps because the Magdalenians were devoting themselves with more
interest to bone than to stone. Magdalenian retouched implements are
less completely worked out and less beautifully regular than those of
Solutrean times. One reason for this decline was that another technique
was coming to prevail. This technique had begun to come into use earlier,
but its typical development was Magdalenian. It was a process which, on
account of its simplicity, once it was mastered, was tending to make
the art of retouching unnecessary. This new method was the trick of
detaching, from a suitable block of flint, long straight-edged flakes, by
a single blow, somewhat on the principle by which a cake of ice can be
split evenly by a well guided stroke of the pick. The typical Magdalenian
implement of stone is a thin flake several inches long, triangular or
polygonal in cross section; in other words, a long narrow prism (Fig. 18,
_d_).
To detach such a flake, flint of rather even grain is necessary, and
the blow that does the work must be delivered on a precise spot, at a
precise angle, and within rather narrow limits of force. This means that
the hammer or striking tool cannot well come in direct contact with the
flint. A short pointed piece, something like a nail or a carpenter’s
punch, and probably made in the prehistoric days of horn or bone, is
set on a suitable spot near the edge of the block of flint, and is then
tapped smartly with the hammer stone. A single stroke slices off the
desired flake. The sharp edges left on the block where the flake has
flown off can be used to start adjacent flakes, and thus all the way
round the block, the workman progressing farther and farther in, until
nearly the whole of his core has been split off into strips.
[Illustration: FIG. 19. Flakes struck from a core and reassembled. Modern
workmanship in Magdalenian technique.]
This Magdalenian process, which was in use ten, fifteen, and perhaps
twenty thousand years ago, survived, or was reinvented, in modern
times. It is only a few years ago that flints were being struck off
by English workmen for use on flintlock muskets exported to Africa.
The modern Englishman worked with a steel hammer instead of a bone rod
and cobblestone, but his technique was the same. Figure 19 shows the
complete lot of flakes into which a block has been split, and which were
subsequently laid together so as to reform the stone in its original
shape. Similar flakes made of obsidian, a volcanic glass similar to flint
in its properties, are still being produced in the Indian districts of
interior Mexico for use as razors (Fig. 18, _e_).
The Magdalenian method of flint working gives the smoothest and sharpest
edge. It is not adapted for making heavy instruments, but it yields an
admirable knife. The process is also expeditious.
_Summary._—The successive steps in the art of stone working in the
Palæolithic may be summarized thus:
Chellean: Coarse flakes detached by blows from the core, which
becomes the implement.
Acheulean: Same process applied to more varied forms.
Mousterian: Flake detached by a blow is sharpened into a tool
by retouching by pressure on one side only.
Aurignacian: Same with improved retouching applied.
Solutrean: Both surfaces of implement wholly retouched.
Magdalenian: Prismatic flake, detached by a blow transmitted
through a point.
73. OTHER MATERIALS: BONE AND HORN
Stone implements must perhaps always remain in the foreground of our
understanding of the Old Stone Age because they were made so much more
numerously than other objects, or at any rate have been preserved so much
more abundantly, that they will supply us with the bulk of our evidence.
At the same time it would be an error to believe that the life of these
men of long ago was filled with the making and using of stone tools to
the exclusion of everything else. Gradually during the last fifty years,
through unremittingly patient explorations and the piecing of one small
discovery to another, there has accumulated a fair body of knowledge of
other sides of the life of Palæolithic men. There is every reason to
believe that as time goes on we shall learn more and more about them, and
thus be able to reconstruct a reasonably complete and vivid picture of
their behavior.
Implements of bone and horn are next most abundant after those of stone,
but it is significant that the Lower Palæolithic still dispensed with
these materials. In the Chellean and Acheulean stations, although broken
bones of devoured animals occur, bone was not shaped. In the Mousterian
this material first came into use, but as yet only as so-called “anvils”
on which to chip flint or cut, and not as true tools.
One of the changes that most prominently mark the passage from the Lower
to the Upper Palæolithic is the sudden development in the use of bone
at the beginning of the Aurignacian, and then of reindeer horn. These
materials came more and more into favor as time went on. The Aurignacians
had bone awls or pins, polishers, paint tubes of hollowed reindeer leg
bone, and points with a grooved base for hafting, generally construed as
javelin heads. In the Solutrean, eyed needles were added. The greatest
development was attained in the Magdalenian. Bone javelin and spear
heads were now made in a variety of forms, with bases pointed, beveled,
or grooved. Hammers, chisels or wedges, and perforators were added to
the list of bone tools. Whistles and perhaps flutes were blown. Reindeer
antler was employed for carved and perforated lengths of horn, “rods of
command” or magic, they are usually called; as well as for harpoons and
throwers, to be discussed below.
By the close of the Palæolithic, objects of organic substances began to
approach in frequency those of flint. This may well have been a sort
of preparation for the grinding and polishing of stone which is the
distinctive technique of the New Stone Age. Bone cannot well be chipped
or retouched. It must be cut, ground, or rubbed into shape. The Neolithic
people therefore may be said to have extended to stone a process which
their predecessors of the Upper Palæolithic were familiar with but had
failed to apply to the harder substance.
74. DRESS
The slender bone needle provided with an eye which the Solutrean and
Magdalenian added to the primitive awl implies thread and sewing. It
may be concluded therefore that, at least from the middle of the Upper
Palæolithic on, the people of Europe went clothed in some sort of fitted
garments. It would be going too far to assert that the Neandertal men ran
about naked as the lower animals. Several inventions which they had made
compel us to attribute to them enough intelligence to lead them to cover
themselves with skins when they felt cold. But they may have been too
improvident, or habituated to discomfort, to trouble even to dress hides.
At any rate there is no positive indication that they regularly clothed
themselves. By contrast, the sewing of the Upper Palæolithic Cro-Magnons
marked a considerable advance.
Ornament may have been earlier than clothing. The paint of the
Aurignacians decorated their own bodies and those of their dead. About
their necks and waists they hung rows of perforated shells and teeth.
More of these have been found on the skeletons of males than of females.
By the Magdalenian, there was sophistication enough to lead to the
carving of artificial shells and teeth out of ivory; and amber was
beginning to be transported from the German coast to Southern France.
75. HARPOONS AND WEAPONS
Towards the end of the Upper Palæolithic, in the Magdalenian, the
harpoon came into extensive use. The shafts have of course long since
decayed, but many of the reindeer antler heads have remained intact. At
first these were notched with barbs along one edge only. In the later
Magdalenian the barbs were cut on both sides. The harpoon differs from
the simple spear or javelin in having its head detachable from the shaft.
The two are fitted together by a socket. If the prey, be it fish or
mammal, is not killed by the first throw, its struggles to escape shake
the shaft loose, while the barbs hold the head firmly imbedded in its
body. A line is attached to the head and tied to the shaft or held in
the hand of the hunter. The animal is thus kept from escaping. During
the Magdalenian the line was kept from slipping off the head by one or
two knobs near the butt. In the subsequent Azilian period the head was
perforated, as is the modern Eskimo practice. The harpoon is really a
rather complicated instrument: it consists of at least three pieces—head,
shaft, and line.
Another device which the Magdalenians shared with the Aztecs, the Eskimo,
and some other modern peoples, is the spear thrower or atlatl. This is a
sort of rod or handle, one end of which is grasped by the fingers while
the other engages the butt end of the harpoon or dart. The hand only
steers the shaft at the beginning of its flight: the propulsion comes
from the thrower. The instrument may therefore be described as a device
for artificially lengthening the human arm and thus imparting greater
velocity and length of flight to the weapon. There is without doubt
considerable ingenuity involved in this apparatus, both in its invention
and in its successful use. A person unskilled in bodily movements would
never hit upon the invention; nor could a race of high native dexterity
acquire proficiency in the art of hunting with the thrower until each
individual was willing to practise for a considerable period. It may
once more be concluded, accordingly, that by the end of the Palæolithic,
civilization had developed to a point where men were much readier to
undergo protracted training and forbearance than they had been at the
beginning of the period.
One instrument that we are wont to associate with the beginnings of
civilization, because of its almost universal employment by savages of
to-day, is the bow and arrow. So strong has the preconception been that
the Palæolithic peoples must have been like modern savages, that time and
time again it has been assumed that they possessed the bow. There is no
convincing evidence to show that this was so, and a good deal of negative
evidence to establish that they were unacquainted with the weapon. All
the Palæolithic remains of flint, bone, or horn, which at times have
been interpreted as arrow points, are more conservatively explained as
knives or heads of darts. The prevailing opinion is that the bow was not
invented until the Neolithic. This would make the weapon only about ten
thousand years old—a hoary antiquity, indeed, but recent as compared with
the knife, the spear, and even the harpoon. The reason for this lateness
in the invention of the bow and arrow is probably to be sought in the
delicacy of the instrument. It is not essentially more complex than the
harpoon, certainly not more complex than the harpoon impelled by the
spear thrower. But it involves much finer adjustments. A poorly made
harpoon is of course inferior to a well-made one, but may be measurably
effective. It may retrieve game half the time. But a bow which falls
below a certain standard will not shoot at all, or will shoot so feebly
as to have a zero efficiency. In fact, one of the things that students
of the beginnings of culture have long been puzzled about is how the bow
and arrow could have been invented. Most other inventions can be traced
through a series of steps, each of which, although incomplete, achieved a
certain utility of its own. But, other than toys or musical instruments,
no implement has yet been found, or even satisfactorily imagined, which
was not yet a bow, which would still serve a purpose, and which, by
addition or improvement, could give rise to the bow.
76. WOODEN IMPLEMENTS
Wood is likely to have been used by primitive men for one purpose or
another from the very earliest times. Even “half men” of the “missing
link” type, it may be believed, would in case of need pick up a stick or
wrench a limb from a tree to serve them as a club. But we do not know
when human beings first began to fashion wood into definite implements by
working it with their stone tools. Wood is too perishable a substance to
have stood any chance of being preserved from so long distant a past.
Our knowledge of the first employment of wood is indirect. Many of the
Mousterian chipped flakes are of such size and shape that they could have
been operated much more effectively had they been mounted on a handle.
Possibly therefore the process of hafting or handling had come to be
practised in the Mousterian, although there is no specific evidence to
this effect. In the Upper Palæolithic, wood was certainly used to a
considerable extent. The harpoon and dart heads, for instance, must have
had wooden shafts.
A true ax is not known from the Old Stone Age and seems to have been
invented in the Neolithic. The distinctive factor of the instrument, upon
which its utility largely depends, is the straightness and smoothness of
the edge; and such an edge is best attained by the grinding process. Even
the unground axes of the earliest Neolithic depended on a single stroke
to provide them with the required straight cutting edge. We may believe,
therefore, that the Palæolithic peoples worked wood in the manner
familiar to us from the practices of many modern savage races. They split
it, rubbed it, and burned it into shape, rather than trying to chop it.
77. FIRE
One of the most fundamental of human arts is the use of fire. It is
also one of the most ancient. Its occurrence is easily traced, at any
rate in deposits that have not been disturbed by nature, through the
presence of charred bones, lumps of charcoal, and layers of ash. Charcoal
crumbles easily, but its fragments are practically imperishable. Its
presence in considerable quantities in any station, particularly if the
coal is accumulated in pockets, is therefore sure proof that the people
who occupied the site burned fires for warmth, or cooking, or both
purposes. The use of fire has been established throughout the part of the
Palæolithic when men lived in caves and under rock shelters; that is,
during the Mousterian and Upper Palæolithic.
The Chellean and Acheulean deposits are so much older and more open, and
in many cases have been washed over so much by rainfall and by streams,
that, if the men of these periods did use fire, as they may well have
done, its evidences might have been pretty generally obliterated.
Whether early Palæolithic men knew how to make fire, or whether they only
found it and kept it alive, is more difficult to say. They could easily
have acquired it in the first place from trees struck by lightning or
from other occasional natural agencies. Then, recognizing its value,
they may well have nursed it along, lighting one hearth from another.
Yet at some time in the Palæolithic the art of producing fire at will,
by friction between two pieces of wood, is almost certain to have been
invented. One may infer this from the general similarity of level of
Magdalenian civilization to that of modern savages, all of whom practise
the art of ignition. But in the nature of things it would be difficult
to find evidence bearing on this point from more than ten thousand years
ago. It can be assumed that man is likely to have lived first for a long
period in a condition in which he knew and used and preserved fire, yet
was not able to produce it.
78. HOUSES
Although Palæolithic man worked so much in stone, he did not build in
it. Hence our knowledge of the kinds of shelters he made for himself
is almost _nil_. There are Upper Palæolithic “tectiform” paintings
which look as if they might be attempts to depict houses. It is clear,
moreover, that in this period the general development of the mechanical
arts was sufficiently advanced to allow of the construction of some sort
of rude edifices.
It is conceivable that as far back as the Lower Palæolithic simple
shelters of branches were constructed, or that skins may have been
hung over a few poles to keep off wind and rain. On account of the
perishable nature of the materials involved, it happens that there is
no proof either for or against such a supposition. It is possible that
in time, when patient excavations shall have revealed some particularly
well preserved site, the holes may yet be found in which the posts of a
Palæolithic hut were once set. In case of a fire, the carbonized stumps
might prove to have been preserved in place; or the butts of the posts
might have gradually rotted away and the space once occupied by them have
become filled with an earthy material of different color and consistency
from the surrounding soil. In this lucky event, even the size and shape
of the house might be reconstructed from the relative positions of the
post holes. From evidence of just this sort some interesting ideas have
actually been obtained as to the houses and village plan of Neolithic
European peoples. Of course, the chances are much less that remains of
this sort would be preserved from the Palæolithic. But the method would
be equally applicable if favorable conditions offered; and it is in some
such way that we may hope in the future to learn a little about the
earliest habitations that mankind constructed. In any event the example
serves to illustrate the indirect and delicate means of which the student
of prehistory must consistently avail himself in his reconstructions of
the past; and gives reason to believe that all that has been learned
about early man in the last fifty years is very little in comparison with
what the ensuing generation and century will bring to light.
79. RELIGION
It has already been said that knowledge of religion, a non-material
thing, can be preserved from the remote past only by the most roundabout
means. It is conceivable that the people of the Upper Palæolithic spent
at least as much time in ceremonial observances as in working flint.
Analogy with modern uncivilized tribes would make us think that this is
quite likely. But the stone tools have remained lying in the earth, while
the religious customs went out of use thousands of years ago and the
beliefs were forgotten. Yet this is known: As far back as the Mousterian,
thirty thousand years ago, certain practices were being observed by
the Neandertal race of western Europe which modern savages observe in
obedience to the dictates of their religion. When these people of the
Mousterian laid away their dead, they put some of their belongings with
them. When existing nations do this, it is invariably in connection
with a belief in the continued existence of the soul after death. We
may reasonably conclude therefore that even in this long distant period
human beings had arrived at a crude recognition of the difference between
flesh and spirit; in short, religion had come into being. Even to say
that Neandertal man did not know whether his dead were dead, implies
his recognition of something different from life in the body, for he
recognized of course that the body had become different. Whether the
Neandertal race already held to the existence of spirits distinct from
man or superior to him, it is impossible to say.
The Upper Palæolithic Cro-Magnon peoples laid out the bodies of their
dead and sometimes folded them. They also sometimes painted the bodies,
and buried flint implements and food in the graves. That is, funerary
practices were becoming established. We may assume that hand in hand with
this development of observances there went a growth of ritual and belief.
80. PALÆOLITHIC ART
The highest achievement of the men of the Old Stone Age is their art.
The perfection to which they carried this art is simply astounding in
view of the comparative meagerness of their civilization otherwise. It is
also remarkable how full-fledged this achievement sprang into existence.
The Lower Palæolithic seems to have been without a trace of art. With
the Aurignacian, simple carving and painting appear; and while the acme
of accomplishment was not reached until the Magdalenian, the essential
foundations of a graphic art of high order were laid in the late
Aurignacian.
The Upper Palæolithic people carved in ivory, bone, and horn; they
incised or engraved on flattened and rounded surfaces of the same
material; and they carved and painted the walls of caves. They modeled
at times in clay and perhaps in other soft materials, and may have drawn
or painted pictures on skins and on exposed rock surfaces, for all we
know; we can judge only by the remains that have actually come down to
us. This art is not a child-like, struggling attempt to represent objects
in the rough, nor is it a mere decorative playing with geometric figures.
These first human artists set boldly to work to depict; and while their
technique was simple, it was carried to a remarkably high degree of
perfection. A few bold strokes gave the outlines of an animal, but they
gave it with such fidelity that the species can often be recognized at a
glance. The Cro-Magnon people must have developed a high power of mental
concentration to be able to observe and reproduce so closely. The most
gifted individuals perhaps practised assiduously to attain their facility.
Palæolithic art is very different from that of most modern savages.
The latter often work out decorative patterns of some complexity,
richness, and æsthetic value, but when they attempt to depict nature,
they usually fail conspicuously. The lines are crude and wavering. Any
head, body, and tail with four legs stands for almost any animal. It is a
reasonable representation of an abstraction that they accomplish, not the
delineation of what is characteristic in the visible form. Both observer
and painter, among most living savages, are supposed to know beforehand
that the drawing represents a fox and not a bear. At most, some symbols
are added, such as a bushy tail for a fox or a fin for a whale. It is
only in rare cases that any but advanced nations break away from these
primitive tendencies and learn to draw things as they really appear. The
ancient Egyptians developed such a faculty, and among savages the Bushmen
are remarkably gifted, but, on the whole, successful realistic art is
an accomplishment of high civilization. It is therefore something of a
mystery how the Cro-Magnon men of the Aurignacian brought themselves to
do so well.
[Illustration: FIG. 20. Limestone statuette from Willendorf, Austria.
Characteristic of Aurignacian treatment of the female figure: the face
and limbs are abbreviated or only indicated; the parts concerned with
reproduction are exaggerated.]
In sculpture their first efforts were directed upon figurines. These
mostly represent the human female. The head, hands, and feet are either
absent or much abbreviated. In the body, those parts having to do with
reproduction and fecundity are usually heavily exaggerated, but at
the same time given with considerable skill (Fig. 20). It is likely
that these statuettes served some religious cult. At any rate, the
carvings in three dimensions often represent the human figure, whereas
two-dimensional drawings, etchings, and paintings mostly represent
animals and are much more successful than the human outlines. In the
Magdalenian, miniature sculpture of animals was added to that of the
human figure (Fig. 21).
Success in seizing the salient outline was the earliest characteristic
of the paintings and drawings. The first Aurignacian engravings are
invariably in profile and usually show only the two legs on the
immediately visible side. In time the artists also learned to suggest
typical positions and movements—the motion of a reindeer lowering its
head to browse, the way an angry bull switches his tail or paws the
ground, the curl of the end of an elephant’s trunk (Figs. 22, 24). In
the Magdalenian, all four legs are usually depicted, and the profile,
although remaining most frequent, as it is most characteristic, is no
longer the only aspect. There are occasional pictures of animals from
before or behind, or of a reindeer with its head turned backward.
[Illustration: FIG. 21. Horse carved in mammoth ivory. From Lourdes,
France. The spirited portrayal of the neck, ears, eyes, and mouth parts
is characteristic of Magdalenian sculpture.]
There are also some devices which look like the beginnings of attempts
at composition. The effect of a row of reindeer is produced by drawing
out the first few in some detail, and then suggesting the others by
sketching in their horns (Fig. 23). Artists were no longer content, in
the Magdalenian, always to do each animal as a solitary, static unit.
They were trying, with some measure of success, to represent the animals
as they moved in life and perhaps to combine several of them into one
coherent picture or to suggest a setting.
By this time they had also acquired considerable ability in handling
colors. The Aurignacian and Solutrean artists restricted themselves to
monochrome effects. They engraved or painted outlines and sometimes
accentuated these by filling them in with pigment. But the best of the
later painters in the Magdalenian—those, for instance, who left their
frescoes on the walls of the famous cave of Altamira in Spain—used three
or four colors at once and blended these into transition tones.
[Illustration: FIG. 22. Engraving of a charging mammoth. On a fragment of
ivory tusk found at La Madeleine, France. While the artist’s strokes were
crude, he was able to depict the animal’s action with remarkable vigor.
Note the roll of the eye, the flapping ears, the raised tail expressive
of anger.]
While animals constitute the subjects of probably four-fifths of the
specimens of Palæolithic art, and human beings most of the remainder,
representations of plants and unrealistic decorative designs are
known. The latter seem to have begun to be specially prevalent in the
latest Magdalenian, as if in preparation of the conventionalized,
non-naturalistic art of the transitional Azilian and Neolithic.
81. SUMMARY OF ADVANCE IN THE PALÆOLITHIC
The history of civilization has herewith been outlined from its first dim
beginnings to about twelve thousand years ago—say to the neighborhood
of 10,000 B.C., as the historian would put it. Progress is immensely
slow at the outset, but gradually speeds up. The tabulation in Figure 25
summarizes some of the principal features of this evolution. This diagram
does not pretend to be complete; it does try to include some of the most
important and representative inventions, arts, and accomplishments of the
Old Stone Age.
[Illustration: FIG. 23. Magdalenian engraving of a herd of reindeer,
found in the grotto of La Mairie, France. The impressionistic manner
enabled the artist to suggest rather effectively a large herd while
drawing out only four animals.]
Thus it appears that the Chellean and Acheulean periods are characterized
essentially by a single art, that of chipping implements on a core of
flint, plus perhaps the use of fire. The Mousterian evinces progress:
stone tools are now made from the flake as well as the core, possibly are
sometimes hafted, bone is occasionally utilized, and there are the first
indications of budding religion; four or five entries are required to
represent these culture traits.
The greatest advance comes from the Mousterian to the Aurignacian; in
other words, between the Lower and the Upper Palæolithic. Three times
as many accomplishments are listed as in the Mousterian, and whole
series of new inventions are now first met with: body ornaments, bone
implements, æsthetic products. This sudden leap in the figures goes
far to signalize the importance of the division between the Upper and
the Lower Palæolithic. In the Solutrean and Magdalenian still further
inventions or refinements appear, until, when the Old Stone Age comes to
a close,[12] the stock of human civilization may be described as perhaps
twenty times as rich as at the beginning. These figures are not to be
taken too literally. The tabulation could easily have been compiled on a
more elaborate basis. But even then the relative proportion of culture
features in each period would remain approximately as here given. And as
regards the general fact of accumulation of civilization, and its range
and nature, the diagram may be accepted as substantially representative
of what happened.
[Illustration: FIG. 24. Magdalenian engraving, perhaps a composition:
browsing reindeer among grass, reeds, and water. Note the naturalistic
movement suggested by the legs and position of the head. Engraved so as
to encircle a piece of antler. Found at Kesslerloch, Switzerland.]
[Illustration: FIG. 25. Growth of civilization during the Palæolithic.]
The end of the Palæolithic thus sees man in possession of a number of
mechanical arts which enable him to produce a considerable variety
of tools in several materials: sees him controlling fire; cooking
food; wearing clothes, and living in definite habitations; probably
possessing some sort of social grouping, order, and ideas of law and
justice; clearly under the influence of some kind of religion; highly
advanced in the plastic arts; and presumably already narrating legends
and singing songs. In short, many fundamental elements of civilization
were established. It is true that the sum total of knowledge and
accomplishments was still pitifully small. The most advanced of the Old
Stone Age men perhaps knew and could do about one thing for every hundred
that we know and can do. A whole array of fundamental inventions—the bow
and arrow, pottery, domestication of animals and plants—had not yet been
attempted, and they do not appear on the scene until the Neolithic. But
in spite of the enormous gaps remaining to be filled in the Neolithic
and in the historic period, it does seem fair to say that many of the
outlines of what civilization was ultimately to be had been substantially
blocked out during the Upper Palæolithic. Most of the framework was
there, even though but a small fraction of its content had yet been
entered.