Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age the World They Succeed Each Other in the Same Rela Tive Order

Ev er yd ay Life in

T h e O ld Sto n e Age

Written and Illus trated by

J‘ n Cw Ba uennell M arjorie a d Q ” ‘ ‘ in En l and Auth o rs of Ev eryday T hings g

’ Putnam s So ns P . G .

New York and London

‘ ’ Ctbe RHiCRCCbOCkCI Dress 1 92 2 r Co py igh t, 1 9 2 2

b y

Marj orie Quennel l

and

C. H . B . Quennel l

Ma de in th e United States of America

INT RO D UCT IO N

TH IS little book has come into being as a result of another that we wrote , and illustrated , between 1915 191 and 9 . It was intended for the younger

H ist o Ever da readers , and we called it a ory f y y

Thi n s i n E l A g ng and . n attempt was made to draw the eyes of our readers away from the De struction which was to the fore in those days , and to present instead a picture of all the care and trouble which had gone to the Construction of th e everyday things that were being destroyed . We

ul gave the matter very caref consideration , and it seemed to us essential that the things illustrated shoul d be of a type with whi ch our readers would be familiar . Some of my readers will have had an Opportunity of seeing the Norman work at Norwich or Castle Rising , or the Renaissance work of Inigo

Jones at Raynham . With some reluctance we made no mention of any earlier work . The doings f o Roman , Saxon , and Dane were only hinted at ,

v ii Introduction and the prehistoric period was not mentioned at

all . a l We st rted with Wil iam the Conqueror , and ni ﬁ shed at the end of the eighteenth century . Since we appear to have interested many of the younger readers , we now want to ﬁll in the long space before 1066 . One is so apt to lump together

h e e as v all t earli r work, and think of it ha ing been done in a few centuries ; the sense of perspective is H lost . istory is rather like travelling on the rail

ﬂash i way , the events past l ke telegraph posts , the nearer ones having their due spaces in between ; but

we ac e s if look b k , the vent , like the posts , are all

e th e bunched together and we cannot realiz spaces . These spaces are as important as the events of H istory , and represent the periods when people were making up their minds ; recovering perhaps

a from gre t disasters , or gathering their forces to go forward .

The races of mankind , like their works , develop

e al by growth to ﬂow r and decay, but ways there is a rebirth or renaissance The M agdaleman Art

e il we illustrat , died out in Az ian times , yet still H lives to inspire us . If istory is divided into events and spaces , then the people are divided into those who have ideas , and want to do and make

v iii Introduction

hi t ngs , and the others who only deal in the ideas , and beneﬁt by these . is We hold that History not just dates , but a

’ long tale of man s life , labour, and achievements ; and if this be so , we cannot afford to neglect the doings of prehistoric men , who , with ﬂint for their material , made all the implements and weapons they needed for their everyday life .

Here is an ill ustration of what we mean . Wil

ur liam of Malmesbury wrote in the twelfth cent y ,

n E of a mo k of the monastery , lmer by name , who made a ﬂying machine and ﬂew " for more than the distance of a furlong ; but , agitated by the vio lence of the wind and the current of air , as well as

e by the consciousness of his rash att mpt , he fell and

e . broke his legs , and was lame ev r after He used to relate as the cause of his failure , his forgetting to provide himself a tail . Elmer was lamed be

a cause , being pioneer , he lacked any history to go on ; he did not leave any design behind him , but think how interesting it woul d have been had he

. lf c done so The twe th entury is hardly prehistoric , f but su ﬁciently so to emphasize the principle, th at there is something to be found out from work well done in any period . Introduction

T o describe the everyday life of prehistoric man fﬁ is di cult , because there is not any history to go n o . This is why we talk about these times as pre historic . For any period after the Roman occu patiou we have the actual written word to depend

330 B . . upon ; even before that , in c , Pytheas of

Marseilles sailed to Britain , and said the climate was foggy and damp , and the people raised quanti ties of corn . In the prehistoric period we have only the everyday things , and the physical charac teristics of the earth itself ; so the pick and shovel become more useful than the pen , and men dig for the information they need . We call the pick and shovel historian an Arch

l o ist archai os aeo g , from the Greek , ancient , and

l os . ae e og , discourse The arch ologist is h lped by the astronomers and mathematicians , who are called in to decide in matter of climatic change like A . l the Glacial Periods sku l is found , like the one at Piltdown in Sussex , and the anatomists examine it carefully to ﬁt it into its place as a link in the

’ chain of man s development . The science of man

an and mankind is called Anthropology, from

os lo os . throp , a man , and g , discourse The science of life is Biology . Flint implements are found , Introduction

de . un r are being found now by Mr Reid Moir , a l bed which dates from Pliocene times . The geo og i ts l s are cal ed in , and the great problem is de bated , whether man could have lived on the earth in this period . So one must know something of geology which is the science that deals with the structure of the earth . A tremendous amount of work has been done in — — what is from the historical point of view a very short time . We give references in the text which

ae show how very recent a growth is Arch ology . If our readers are interested in thi s plan they can themselves raise a superstructure of more advanced

e nd knowledge , and to this our authorities are named in this Introduction . We do not lay claim to any great store of archaeological knowledge our selves , and have approached our task rather as illustrators . As painter and architect , who have been making things ourselves all our lives , we may perhaps be able to treat of the work of prehistoric man in a sympathetic fashion , and hope our pic tures will help our readers to see these old people a little . This brings up the question of how we are to ap proach prehistoric man . We must free our minds

xi Introduction

e il of prejudice . Som people w l say that he was

un leas a repulsive creature, incredibly dirty and p ant . Obviously this could not have been the cas e

M d l enians with the ag a , whose work we see on p . l i 177 . There wil be other people who w ll regard

as our friend the Noble Savage, and clothe him in their minds with all the simple virtues . It will not do to jump to conclusions . Shall we judge him by his WORK" If we try to ﬁnd out how he hi lived , the tools he used , and the t ngs that he

e made with them , th n in the end we shall have a hi picture in our own minds . T s is the essential

ul part of reading a book , that it sho d help us to form our own conclusions . So we do not seek to teach , nor do we wish to preach , but we do want

e to interest our readers , and h re we give you fair hi warning . If we can do so ; if t s subtle little microbe can work its way into your system , and you begin to grub about , and want to ﬁnd out how

e things were made and done , th n for the rest of your long lives the itching little worry will con demu you to go on grubbing, and you will become archaeologists yourselves . We should like to thank our Publishers for the trouble they have taken in publishing ; Mr . Re gi

" II Introduction

l na d Smith and Mr . O . G . S . Crawford for kindly

advice ; Mr . Reid Moir for permission to include

our dr awing of his theory of ﬂint ﬂaking ; and our

very special thanks are due to Professor H . J .

Fleure and Dr . A . C . Haddon, who not only read

our . thr ough MS and proofs with the greatest care , but as well made many suggestions which we feel have added to the value of the book. We are in debted to our friend Mr . Harold Falkner for in

h ﬂints formation as to Farn am , and M . Forestier

th e and Mr . Cox , of London Library, for suggestions as to authorities .

ARJ ORIE . H . . UE M and C B Q NNELL.

' BERKH AMP S T ED, H EBr s ,

Se tem e 1921 . p b r ,

xiii

SH ORT LIST OF AUTH ORITIES

T IT LE O F BOOK AUT HOR PUBLISHER

The Antiqui ty of M an

i n Eur e ames G e ki e O v e 8: B d 19 14 op J i li r oy , he e . S ll as T Ag of the Earth W . J o ’ The Anti uit M an A th u e th ams N ate q y of r r K i Willi org , 1920

Anci e B Ri e lmes end es nt ritai n T . C a n P s 1907 c Ho l r o r ,

A . ll Macm an 19 15 ncient H u nters . S as W J o ill , M an the Primeval Sav

th n n Sm h S f d 8 9 a e G . t tan 1 4 g Wor i gto i or , M an of the O ld Stone ’ F s n h Age H . . O bor C arles Scribner s S ns 19 18 o , ’ La Caverne d Altami ra Emile Cartail h ac et Imprimerie de Mona ’ a e enr B eu co 1906 l bb H i r il , - R M P re al trolithic M an . e d i a s n 19 19 p J i o r H rri o , Rostro- cari nate Fli nt

eme s E Ra Lan r eedi Impl nt . y kester P oc ngs of the Ro al S et oci v . y y, ol i xc .

d . his ast O G . S Craw d M an a n P . . for Oxford U n i v e r s i t y P es s 1921 r , Sci ence from an Easy

Chair E. Ra Lan ester M eth uen 1912 y k , Gu ide to the Stone Age British Museum 191 1 Guide to Fossil M um mals and Bi rds Natural H i s t o r y m M useu .

Guide to El ephants (Recent a nd Fossil) Natural H i s t o r y M useum Short List of Authorities

T IT LE O F BOOK AUT HOR PUBLISHER

Guide to Fossil Re mai ns of M an Natural H i s t o r y M useum 19 18

’ M anuel d Archéol ogi e D é ch elette Librairie Alphonse Picard et ﬁl s The Gravel Beds of Farnham Henry Bury P roceedi ngs of the ’ Geologi sts Ass oci a

ti n v ol . v . Pa t o , xxi r

4 . 1913

m d e nive s r . u tt Ca t Prehisto y M C. B rki bri g U r i y P ess 1921 r ,

The Childho d o Art . G . S ea n e an Pau T rench o f H p ri g K g l , ,

T rii bner Cc . , 19 12

’ Naturali st s Voyage i n

M . ent n B a l Ch arl es Da w n . D S s M . S . e e H . g r i J o Th e Nati ve Tri bes of r and Gill en M a m ll an 18 99 Central Australi a Spence c i , The Northern Tribes of

e and G l en M a mill an 1904 Central Australi a Spenc r il c , The Aborigi nes of

B u h Sm th T rubner Co . 18 78 Victori a R. ro g y , The Abori gi nes of

R th F . n S ns 18 99 ma i a . L n o Tas n H i g o Ki g , D B s in 6th ntral Eskimo . F an a The Ce r r k o , Annu al Report of the Bu reau of Washington Govern — Ethn lo 1 8 8 4 5 ment Pr nt n Ofﬁ ce o gy, i i g F idt f Nansen Lon mans G een St Eskimo Life r jo g , r

Co . . 18 93

H andbook to Ethno

graphi cal Collecti ons Britis h M useum

Contents

CH APT ER ARTISTS O F TH E O LD STO N AGE IV . E — — Aurignacian M an Combe Capell e M an Grimaldi M an — — uts Spo esh ave Sh aft- straigh tening Reindeer H — k — — — Bow- drill Artists Irish D eer Altamira Aurignacian — ’ — Drawing M utilation D ancing Wolf s Fang Sol u — — — treau M an Bone Needl es Ch ancelade M an Harpoons — ~— — - Spears Eskimo Kayak Bladder D arts G ames — — — Huts T ents Digging Sticks M agdalenian Pai nting n — —M and Engrav i g Daggers agdalenian Life.

H E E D O F TH E O LD ST N V . T N O E AGE — — — — Ofnet Men A B C Painted Stones D ug- outs Rafts

INDE"

xv iii ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE l ﬂ G .

MAGDALENIAN PAINT ING Fronti spi ece

ROST RO - CARINAT E OR EAGLE - BEAK FLINT IM PLEMENT

SECT ION ACROSS WALES AND ENGLAND

CAUSES O F T H E ICE AGES

GLACIERS AND MORAINES

T H E FORMAT ION O F RIVER TERRACES

T H E FARNRAM TERRACES

IT H T H T H E S B - M O F J P ECAN ROPUS , U AN AVA

A TH EORY O F FLINT FLAKI NG

a nthro us D awsoni T H E I T p , P L DOWN MAN

’ T H E PILT DOWN MAN S BONE IMPLEMENT

PILT DOWN MAN MAKING FLINT IMPLEMENT

M AKING FIRE

ST REPYAN BOUCH ER OR HAND - A" E

M achcerodu s T H E S B - T O O T IIED TI , A RE GER

T H E PIT FALL Illustrations

GALLEY HILL MAN

CH ELLEAN BOUCH ER OR HAND - A" E

O VAL IMPLEMENT

CH ELLEAN SCRAPER

FALLING SPEAR

A BREAK- WIND

AN ACH EULEAN BOUCH ER OR HAND - A" E

Ele has rimi eni a s T H E MM T H p p g , MA O

Rhi noceros ti chorhinu s T H E W L - T , OO Y COA ED RH INOCEROS

TASMANIAN SPEAR

A BARK RAFT

MAKING GRASS ROPE

MOUST ERIAN CAVE - DWELLERS

NEANDERT H ALER OR MOUST ERIAN

POISE O F T H E MOUST ERIAN FIGURE

M O UST ERIANS ON T H E MARCH

MOUST ERIAN SPEAR- H EAD

AUSTRALIAN SPEAR - T H ROWING

36 . HAFT ING

3 A T LI H UT 7 . US RA AN Illustrations

MAKING FIRE A BARK CANOE

A PRIMIT IVE SPINDLE

T H E CRO- MAGNON MAN

COMBE CAPELLE MAN

GRIMALDI MAN

TYPE O F HUT S SUGGEST ED BY AURIGNACIAN DRAWINGS T H E SPOKE SH AVE

SH AFT - STRAIGH T ENIN G

T H E BOW- DRILL

Cervus i anteus T H E I I H D g g , R S EER

AURIGNACIAN DRAWING

’ F T W LF F M Ie G H O E PER ORA ED O S FANG , RO BEACON

SOLUT REAN FLINT S

MAKIN G O F BONE NEEDLES

CH ANCELADE MAN SPEARS AND HARPOONS

T H E KAYAK

FRAMEWORK O F KAYAK

KIM BL D T P B ES O ADDER AR , HAR OON AND IRD DART

xxi Illustrations

FIG .

58 . ESKIMO GAME

TYPE O F HUT S SUGGESTED BY MAGDALENIAN DRAWINGS

ESKIMO SUMMER TENT

D IGGING - STICK

MAGDALENIAN CAVE PAINT ING

G Z I R I E R RA NG E ND ER , ENGRAVED ON A OUND BONE

D C I ST M EER ROSS NG A REA , ENGRAVED ON A ROUND BONE

MAGDALENIAN CARVED IVORY DAGGER

MAGDALENIAN CARVED IVORY HARPOON TH ROWER

ROUND - H EADED O FNET MAN

LONG - B EADED O FNET MAN

AZ ILIAN PAINT ED ST ONES EVERYDAY LIFE

T H E O L D ST ONE AG E

Everyd ay Life in the Old Stone Age

E l Here in ngland , it was largely due to Wi liam 23d 1769 Smith , who was born , on the of March , ,

at Churchill , in Oxfordshire , that we now under stand the way the stratiﬁed rocks of the earth are

. Wh built up layer by layer Steno , a Dane , o was a

professor at Padua , had originated this idea, and 1669 published a book on the subject in , but it was left to William Smith to work out the detail in this

. l a country His father was a smal , f rmer, and

William had little schooling , yet by his observation

e - of the countryside , by the time h was twenty two he had constructed a system O f geology ; and re

member there was no system before . When he was eighteen he had been apprenticed to a land i surveyor , and later worked on the canals wh ch were being cut through the countryside during the

end of the eighteenth century . This work , of f cour se , a forded him a splendid opportunity for

’

. O observing the formation of the earth s crust S ,

’ very largely as a result of Smith s work, we now know that the earth is buil t up of a series of sedi

e mentary strata , and that th se are in reality the sediment which has been deposited on the beds of old seas or lakes . These vary in thickness and v position , in arious parts of the world , but in all 4 T he A B C of Archaeology

parts they are in the same relative position one to

th e . other The earth is rather like an orange , with ’ diﬂerent many skins of colours , thicknesses , and materials ; here and there a rude thumb has been

e insert d , and one or more skins torn out , but on each side of the gap , beyond the damage , we find the skins ; rivers and seas may fill the gap, or the skins be distorted by blisters , or crinkled into mountains , but the principle of stratification remains .

The A e o the Earth Professor Sollas in his book , g f , l has an interesting chapter on Wi liam Smith , and tells how he conceived the idea of representing the l " resu ts O f his work in a geological map . Alone and single - handed he determined to accomplish in ’ outline that which the organized eﬂorts of H . M .

Geological Survey, extended over half a century , have not yet completed in detail ; and he succeeded l in his task . Wi liam Smith has a further claim to our attention , because he discovered that not only were the fossils in the various strata the re

i s mains O living organism , but that each stratum had its own peculiar fossils which were typical of the bed in which they were deposited , and the time l when they were aid down , and that in all parts of 5 Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age the world they succeed each other in the same rela tive order . In classical times it had been thought that animal life could generate itself in the mud and slime of rivers and lakes, and fossils were regarded as specimens whichhad been left behind , or not proper

l . y developed , and so had been petriﬁed into stone

’ Geologists adopted and developed Smith s ideas , l and by the discovery of the same kinds of fossi s , in similar rocks in different parts of the world ,

began to be able to date them . In doing this they were attacked by their brother scientists who con demned a this idea , pointing out that life must st rt

at some definite point , and spread from this centre to other parts of the world . For the ordinary man , it seems sufficient to suppose that if you find the same kind of fossil in the limestones of America and E ngland , and find the limestone itself in the same

relative position to the other strata, then if the two are not t win brothers they must be most nearly

ﬁn related . The modern scientist can d out by

Observation how long the delta of a river, or any

to ul . other form of sediment , takes accum ate In this way they form a scale by which they can also

estimate the age of the older deposits . To revert to our strata : The Chart opposite 6

Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age

e . e S condary Period Here we find the Cr taceous , l or cha k beds , and it was in these that primitive man in Britain dug for the flints he needed to make his implements . Perhaps the next of our difficulties will be the constant reference which is made by the arch aeolo gists to the Ice Ages , and times when the climate of England was much colder than it is now ; when we had glaciers here , and the North Sea was a solid E mass of ice uniting Scandinavia with ast Anglia .

i e There are many theor s as to how this came about . We all know that the earth revolves round the sun on a path which is called its orbit . It completes the circle in a year, and turns on its own axis in so

365 . doing once a day , or times in the year As the

th e earth turns round on its axis , part which is toward the sun enjoys daylight , and in the part h whic is away , the people sleep because it is the night . It is quite a good plan to make a rough working

- 4 model of all this on the dining room table, as Fig . , and if the family possesses a globe it will help . If not, let an orange take the place of the earth , and

- drive a knitting needle through it for the axis .

You can eat the Earth afterwards . A candle in the 8 - Fli nt m l ement. —R str - arinate or Ea le bea I FIG . 2 . o o c g k p

and En l and . —Se ti n a r ss Wal es FIG . 3. c o c o g

—Causes O f th e Ice A FIG . 4 . g

T he A B C of Archaeology

middle of the table can be the sun . If the table is ’ if circular, the edge can be the earth s orbit ; not

. on we can draw one in chalk If this path , the

- knitting needle is placed in a vertical position , so

or l that the equator of the orange , earth , is evel with the candle , or sun , then it can be seen that the equator will derive more light from the candle than the top and bottom where the knitting- needle comes through . SO we discover In the case of the earth , that the equator is hotter than the polar

e caps , because it g ts more sunshine . If we move the orange round the orbit , turning it as we go , but

- keeping the knitting needle upright, we arrive at dayand night , heat and cold , but not summer and winter , or why, when we have summer , Australia

- has winter ; but let the knitting needle lean over , f and we have an entirely different state of af airs .

- This is what has happened , and to day the angle of inclination of the equator to the orbit of the

° earth is 23 27 Our diagram (Fig . 4) shows how this affects the seasons .

The Vernal Equinox of 21st March is shown at 1 position , when day and night are equal . At the

on 2l st 2 Summer Solstice June , position , all the

North Hemisphere will be turned towards the sun, 11 Everyday Life in th e Old Stone Age

and we get th e longest days . At the Autumnal

E 23d 3 and ~ ni quinox, September , position , day ght

. 4 are again equal The Winter Solstice , position ,

2l st comes on December with the shortest day , and the Northern Hemisphere leans away from the sun

and warmth . The scientists tell us that this inclination of the

’ equator to the earth s orbit , through long ages , varies from 22° 6 ' to 24° The former would ’ give us less diﬂerence between winter and summer

e than we have now, the latter would incr ase the

’ difference . The shape of the earth s orbit changes , hl and sometimes is roug y elliptical , with the sun much nearer to one end than the other . This would mean short summers and long cold winters . There is what is called th e Precession of the E quinoxes ; the earth wobbles as it spins , and this further affects the inclination of the axis . The Gulf Stream gives us now a better climate than our latitude entitles us to . When we bear in mind that the scientists tell us that a very small fall in the temperature would bring back the snow and

Ice , then it is easy to see how a combination of the conditions we have mentioned may have caused the Ice Ages . 12 T he A B C of Archaeology

e Ther is no need for alarm , and we need not rush off to buy skates in preparation for the next Ice

Age . Thousands of years pass as the earth slowly wobbles on its journey . If we refer to the Chart , we shall see how all through Pliocene times weather

e conditions becam colder , and culminated in the ﬁrst Ice Ageh th en came a more genial time which th e scientists call the First Interglacial Period , because they have arrived at the conclusion that

e there wer four glacial periods , with three inter

l a - g cial periods in between , and a post glacial one

n after the fourth glacial period . We may be livi g

e in an int rglacial period now . T h e next of our difﬁculties may be the constant reference which the archaeologist makes to the action of Glaciers ; to large surfaces of land being denuded and deposited elsewhere , and to a period which is referred to as that of the River Drift . We will start with the Glaciers .

A glacier is a very slowly moving river of ice . Gathering its forces from the snowﬁ elds on the summits of the mountains , it moves by gravity

s down the valleys , and collect tributaries as it goes along . In doing this the snow solidiﬁes into ice , and it is quite easy to see that a tremendous pres 13 Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age

sure must be exercised on the sides of the valleys .

If we go into a mountainous region , which during

the Ice Age had glaciers , we shall ﬁnd plenty of

evidence of their existence . The sides of the valleys have been worn smooth by the slowly moving mass

roches moutonnées of ice grinding into the rocks ( ) , there will also be piles of splintered rocks which are

called moraines . The intense cold causes the rocks

above the valley to crack and splinter, and frag ments fall , and are left as embankments at the sides , or rolling on to the ice are carried along .

te 1 . 5 These are called la ral moraines ( , Fig ) Where two glaciers join , these meet , and ﬂowing down th e mi ddle of the lower glaciers are called medial

2 . moraines ( , Fig In this way glaciers trans port materials for long distances . The débris of the lateral moraines falls into crevasses , or cracks in the ice , and appears lower down in the terminal moraines . e l The glaci r moving downhil , comes to a place

th e . where the temperature is warmer , and ice melts Here we ﬁnd what is called a terminal moraine or ll 3 . 5 moraine girdle ( , Fig ) These are genera y

- r fan shaped , and represent the heap of b oken rock nd a stone , which has been pushed forward under 14

T he A B C of Archaeology

the nose of the glacier , and gathered up by it in its progress from the bed and sides of the valleys .

O ld r The existence of mo aine girdles , which have become covered with soil and trees , and now look like hills , is a proof of ice conditions in former times . There are girdle moraines as far west as Lyons in

France , which prove that the Swiss glaciers were once of enormous length . High up on the sides of

roches moutonnées S valleys , the how that the glaciers were once very much deeper . All those facts help the scientists in their conclusions as to the dura tion of the Ice Ages , and the temperature general then . l Behind a moraine girdle , in the bed of the O d glacier , we ﬁnd a sort of enormous basin , ﬁlled with

s l i 4 . hummock of boulder clay , cal ed druml ns , at To make this apparent the ice of the glacier has been broken away at 5 . This clay is the mud which was brought down by the glacier , and was formed by the churning action of its underside on the rocks over which it passed .

Below the moraine girdle , we ﬁnd what the Ger

Schotter . mans call ﬁelds It is here , where the ice melts , that the river comes into being , carrying

O f away the smaller pieces rock , depositing them 17 Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age

s chotter ﬁrst in the , then breaking and rolling the pieces until lower down we ﬁnd them in the gravel

formations of the river terraces . Our readers , perhaps , will know a river whose banks descend in l terraced steps ; it is a very usua formation .

This connection between the glaciers , their girdle

moraines , and river terraces is very important ,

c be ause by their aid great men , like Professors

Penck Geikie and , have worked out the theory of the Glacial Periods . Professor Penck studied the river Steyr In Upper

Austria, and found that each of its terraces con nected up with the girdle moraine of an ancient glacier, and from this the following theory of the formation of terraces themselves has been evolved .

. e Diagram Fig 6 has be n prepared to illustrate this .

Wemustbear in mind that before what wenow call

e e glacial times there had b en other cold p riods , and earlier river systems . Some great climatic changes must have been responsible for the extinction of

h e a e great reptiles like t Dinosaurs , who , being l rg bodied and small brained , could not adapt them

Ice selves to change . The Ages played their part

’ in man s development ; he learned to suit himself to new conditions and surroundings . 18 FIG —T F rmat n R . 6 . h e i ive T erra o o of r ces .

— F IG . . T h e Farnh am T err 7 aces.

— - F Pith e anth r us th e Sub man ava. IG . 8 . c op , of J

T he A B C of Archaeology

6 f b e re l ac1al . Bed A in diagram Fig . worr d p g

In th e First Glacial Period , at the end of Pliocene l times , the volume of water in the rivers wou d not

e have b en large , because so much was locked up

in the ice of the glaciers . Then came th e warmer weather of the First c Intergla ial Period , when vast quantities of water

e w re melted out of the glaciers , and hurrying down

O ld the river bed , or forming another , cut a new

channel to B . As the water lost its power to cut

channels it began to build up the bed of gravel at C .

Then the Second Glacial Period came on, and the

e river again shrank in Size . At the Second Int r n glacial Period the bed was cut dow to D , and the

e b d of gravel at E built up gradually afterwards . \ The channel was cut down to F in Third l nter a gl cial times , and bed G formed , and the ﬁnal channel H cut in the warmer times after the Fourth

- e . Glacial P riod , which we call post glacial An ingenious method has been applied to form an estimate of the time which has elapsed since the

last Ice Age . As the glaciers retreated , during each summer mud was melted out O f them and

th e deposited in form of clay ; a band each year .

e In Sw den this is called banded clay , and in that 21 Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age c country Baron de Geer has ounted all the bands ,

and so formed an estimate of time .

c 1 2 To revert to the theory of how the terra es , , 3 and were formed , we have shown the gravels of which they are composed by a dotted surface , and it will be seen that they are in reality the edges of "

0 1d - l the river beds , which have been eft behind as the water cut its way down . Our readers may

i s think th s sound very ingenious , but demand some o ther proof, that all the terraces were not formed in one interglacial period This is supplied by the ﬂint implements of vary ing design , and the fossil remains of animals of widely different periods , which have been found in the gravel formations of river terraces in many i parts of the world . Th s is the period of the River

Drift . 6 Our drawing (Fig . ) can be taken as showing the terraces of the Somme at S . Acheul . The e Somme is c lebrated , because here it was, at Abbe ville , that M . Boucher de Perthes discovered large quantities of ﬂint implements in the gravel de

in . posits , the middle of the nineteenth century

As early as the end of the seventh century, a ﬁne

- pear shaped ﬂint implement , which is now in the 22

Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age

. 4 man plateau No , which leads us to suppose that did not live on the banks of the Somme before the

First Glacial Period . In the next terrace down

. 3 Stre an . wards , No , py implements are found

e We shall explain what these are later ; m anwhile , how did they get there " We have imagined a mighty river rushingdown in ﬂood at the beginning

tremen of the First Interglacial period , when the dous glaciers began to shrink and melt away, and this woul d be quite a different matter to the wast

ou . age only, which went during glacial times This

e ﬂood of water is not an exaggeration . R member that we are writing about periods which extended ll over , not hundreds , but thousands of years ; as we that we are living in an interglacial period now . 1920 In September, , a warm spell of a few days accompanied by rain after a rather cold summer , caused a serious situation at Chamonix in Switzer

" ” land . The papers said a glacier had burst . What really h appened was that the rise in temper ature caused the Mont Anvers Glacier to melt more rapidlythan its accustomedrateofwastage . Masses of ice broke away , and were swept with stone and

e . mud into the vall y Rivers rose , trees were uproot ed , and houses carried away . NO W think of the 24 T h e A B C of Archaeology

- whole of the north of Europe under an ice cap , and the Swiss glaciers extending as far west as Lyons in ﬁ l ance , and the temperature gradual y becoming warmer . The scientists tell us that it only wants a fall of about 5 ° centigrade below the mean annual temperature of Europe to have all the rigour of the 4° 5° glacial periods back again , or that a rise of to would cause all the Swiss glaciers to disappear . So that one week rather warmer than usual in the First Interglacial period would have wrought tre

- mendous damage . The new river bed would have been torn out to level B , and the ﬁrst layer of gravel formed by the grinding up of the rocks and ﬂints

e d posited at C . Then perhaps the winter came

e on or dry r weather . The river shrank, and Strep

’ yan man came down to the water s edge , he wanted to ﬁsh or drink ; he may have camped there . In any case he left his tools behind and these were

- made of ﬂint , and some are found to day nearly a

e sharp and perfect as when he us d them , neither rolled , nor abraded . The river rose again , and bringing down more gravel covered up the tools ; sometimes it carried an implement along , and bruising it very considerably in so doing deposited it lower down th e river . 25 Everyday Life in th e Old Stone Age

In the second terrace (2) are found a few Strepy

tools in the underlying gravels . These may have washed down when the bed E was being formed in

e Second Interglacial times , becaus as the bed C

r S re over it was being unde mined , the t pyan plements in it may have slid down into the new gravels which were being formed under it . On these gravels sands were deposited , and in these i early Chellean mplements are foun d . So man again , during all the long years of the Second Inter

’ e on glacial period , liv d the water s edge of the

Somme , and left his tools behind him to be covered up by the gravel deposited in ﬂood times h when he had to retreat up to the igher terraces . In the gravels of this terrace are foun d remains of

i uns E. ant g , a southern typ e of elephant whi ch preceded the mammoth . This shows us that the climate was warm .

In the gravels of the ﬁr st terrace are found later

and Chellean implements , the ﬁnal gravel bed has not been explored because it is frequently sub

It should be noted that distur bances of the level

’ ce e O f th e of the earth s surfa , in r lation to the level

a e sea , may h ve contribut d to the formation of river 26 The A B C of Archaeology

. n terraces For i stance , well below the bed of the

O ld h Thames is an buried c annel , in which the

th e . river ran , where land was higher Any raising of the land ’s surface would make the river run more rapidly on its way to the sea , and so have n more power to cut its way dow , and form terraces , or it may have been that the Ice Age locked up

r t emendous quantities of water , and thus lowered

- the sea level . Since Neolithic times there has

’ been little change in the earth s surface .

Fig . 7 shows the terraces of the River Wey at

Farnham , Surrey , and we include this because it is nearer home than the Somme, also nearly all the ﬂint implements illustrated in this book have been drawn from specimens found at Farnham . The gravel beds are shown by solid blacks . At A no

l s o imp ements have been found , this may have been the bed of an enormous river O f preglacial times which extended as the dotted line right across the country to Hindhead . The next river formation was on the line B , and of this there are gravel beds remaining on three ridges , valleys between having been cut since to C . D and E Show rivers which were gradually shrinkn to pigmy dimensions . 27 Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age It is quite easy to see that such tremendous rivers could not have existed as part of our present

river system . These old rivers were ambitious

- pushing fellows wanting more elbow room , and

this they had . The Thames at London stretched

e ﬁve miles wide betwe n Highbury and Clapham . E f urope in Pleistocene times had a di ferent shape,

and was a bigger place than it is now , and raised

- Th e higher above the sea level . Atlantic was per haps one hundred miles more to the west : the

Mediterranean consisted of two inland seas .

Sea E The Irish , nglish Channel , and North Sea

e . were wide valleys f eding noble rivers One , which we will call the River of the Men of Galley

Hill , had for its tributaries the Thames , Rhine,

E r and lbe , and it discharged its waters into a no th

ern sea just south of the Faroe Isles . Another , which we will call the River of the Men of S .

Acheul , had for its tributaries the Seine , Somme ,

and all our southern rivers , and ﬂowed westward to the Atlantic through the fertile lands of What is

E e now the English Channel . ngland during som parts of the glacial periods was connected to Eu rope by a watershed of dry land where the Straits

of Dover now are . There was an isthmus across 28 T he A B C of Archaeology

the Mediterranean at Gibraltar , and another south

‘ O f Sicily . These trackways are very important because by them the Arctic animals could come south when it was cold here , and the southern animals come north when it was warm . This is the explanation of the hippopotamus in England

wa he did not need to swim , and s not cut out for

ﬂying ; he walked here . In Aurignacian times the

a Sahara , till then pleasant grassland , became a desert , and this led to the migration of men and animals . Before we leave the question of rivers and their

6 . terraces , we must refer back to Fig . On the upper drawing of the river the gravel of the ter

de os races , which is shown dotted , is overlain by p its which are shown by hatched lines .

or These deposits are in the nature of Loess ,

- loam , brick earth and soil washed down by rain , and have been a great puzzle to the geologists . At one time it was thought that great lakes were formed durl ng the temperate periods between the

Ice Ages , and that the deposits were made by the settling of the boulder clay which had been dis solved in the water ; these would be called l acus trine . Some such cause must be looked for in the 29 Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age

thick deposit of brick earth at Caddington, to l l which we shal refer later , but this cou d not have been the case at S . Acheul on the Somme . Here ,

o owing to the investigations of M . C mmont , it is thought that these deposits on the terraces on the top of the gravel are what the scientists call sub aerial , that is , deposited on the surface by the

- wind , as opposed to sub aqueous , or under the

O f . w action water The Loess , to hich constant

ae reference is made by the arch ologists , is a greyish brown sandy and chalky loam deposited by wind in the form of dust . This was caused by the action

s of frost during a glacial period . A the ice re treated the earth woul d have been a very barren place . There is evidence that at this period there were great winds and blizzards , which swept over

fr these deserts and blew the dust about . This e quently led to the destruction of animal life, and their bones are found now in great quantities i embedded nthe Loess . The position of the Loess lands is very important ; beginning at the Ural Mountains they stretch across South Russia to the

Carpathians and the Danube, then by way of the north - west of Austria through South Germany into the north of France . The Loess did not lend itself 30

Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age

(Refer to Chart and check the order of these industries . ) Think how bewildering it must have been to ﬁnd all these evidences of ancient civilization in one

e and the sam terrace , because not only were the implements found in the lowermost gravels of a 3 2 later age as one went down from terrace , , and 1 , but they also were later in each terrace as one approached the surface . It is owing to the genius of the French archaeologists that we have found out all this .

E e In ngland w have had similar problems . At

Caddington , Bedfordshire , Mr . Worthington G .

’ Smith found an actual palaeolithic ﬂint worker s

- working place , and how he did so is most interest in l M he e hi an T P rim val Sava e. g y told in , g T s working - place was buried under brick- earth and 4 13 clay , at a depth from to feet below the sur m face . Here Mr . Smith discovered ﬂint imﬂ e ents of ul Ache ean type, with the anvils and hammer stones which had been used in their production , and specimens can be seen at the British Museum .

These are sharp , and have not been rolled . In the 4 to 13 feet thickness of ground over these were discovered rougher implements of Chellean type 32 T he A B C of Archaeology

which were earlier in date , and were covered with scratches or abraded , and had been rolled along .

Th e suggestion is that man lived on the lower level , or palaeolithic ﬂoor , on the banks of a lake , in one of the later interglacial periods , then an Ice Age

e . cam on , and he retreated to sunnier lands At the beginning of the next interglacial period , a

- slowly moving , half frozen mass descended from the higher ground near Caddington , and brought with it these older implements which had been left

e on by earli r men still , and deposited these the top of the later ones .

If you go to Caddington , you can see by the sections of ground which are V isible in the brick yards , how this contorted drift pushed along in a

- ﬂ i u d . I semi state and then came to rest Truly , n

O ld the Ice Ages the earth was cut and carved , shaped and modelled in a terriﬁc way . We may now sum up the problems which have f con ronted the archaeologists in their studies . We

’ started the chapter with William Smith s work on stratiﬁcation , and this has enabled the scientist to gauge the age of sedimentary rocks by measuring the rate of deposit in modern formations . On p . 12 how the astronomers help by their calculations 38 Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age

’ of alterations of the inclination O f the earth s axis ; 8 and on p . 1 how the girdle moraines of old glaciers and their connection with the river terraces give another clue .

cie Another method may be instanced . The s n tist diﬁ er ﬁnds that there has been little , if any, ence between the appearance of men and women , or the domestic animals , of the time of ancient E gypt and our own day . This being the case , the

. E . anti uns Piltdown man (Fig g , and the sabre toothed tiger must be very remote , though it must be borne in mind that sudden changes O f climate would have correspondingly rapid changes of men and animals .

en Out of all these facts , the archaeologists have deav oured to form a scale of time by which to

of s measure the age these prehistoric civilization , and this we have incorporated in our Chart . It

need should not be taken too much to heart , and

’ ’ not disturb any boy s or girl s Faith ; it seems to us

all of s a splendid picture ; these thousands year ,

e and man moving through them alert , r sourceful , " and plucky , and on an upward path CHAPTER II

T H E S T REPYAN C E LLEAN AND AC E LEAN , H , H U M EN O F T H E O LD S T ONE AG E

WE can now pass to a consideration of the most — interesting part of our study Prehistoric man .

What did he do on the banks of the Somme , the

O r l Thames , the Wey ; how did he fend for himse f, l " his wife , and chi dren Or did he at ﬁrst look after

l - himse f , and preach the doctrine of self help to the family " Perhaps before we endeavour to sum up

his doings , it will be well to take stock of his scanty

belongings .

H e aving don this latter , we shall then have to

look about for a model to help us . A painter uses

a dummy which he calls a lay - ﬁgure ; this he dresses

up and poses for the picture . In the case of pre

historic man , our model must be drawn from the savage races of modern times ; and remember there

are still people who use stone, because they cannot

are work iron , but such types few and far between

l - now, and have lost their O d self reliance and ln 35 Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age

terest by contact with civilization . Obviously we cannot draw any useful comparisons between pre historic and civilized man ; they are poles apart so far We as their lives are concerned ; but , if go back a little to the earlier voyagers , we can ﬁnd records of people who were still living as simple and primi tive a life as the prehistoric men .

Darwin started on his epoch- making voyage in

Bea le 27th 18 31 . the g on the December, He was

- not quite twenty three , and was away for nearly

ﬁve years , during which time he went round the world , and saw many native races . He wrote his

The Vo a e o the Bea le book on y g f g on his return , and if any boy or girl has not read it , it is a defect which

e e can be speedily remedi d , becaus there is a cheap ” edition in the Everyman series . We shall draw

E e on Darwin , then , for comparisons . ven b fore his time the poor Tasmanians had been banished

a . to an island , and had ceased to exist as nation

e They were an exceedingly primitive p ople , and

’ fortunately for us Mr . H . Ling Roth s book on the Aborigines of Tasmani a contains a most graphic and interesting account of all that went to make up their everyday life . Messrs . Spencer and Gillen ’s books have been drawn upon for details 36 r n e a Men St epya , Chellean , Ach ule n

of the nativ e Australians . Now for prehistoric man himself . We have referred to the archaeologist as a pick and shovel historian , because he digs for his know

l . ledge . This means he digs for what is eft of man It is rather sad that man does not lend himself to the fossilization of his remains . He has always been a restless individual . The lower animals in kindly fashion seemed to arrange that their bodies

be might sink in the water , settle in the mud , and O come beautiful fossils . This ften came about as — the result O f drought the poor beasts maddened by thirst would dash into the muddy bed of a river , and be too exhausted to pul l themselves out . That they did so , has enabled us to ﬁnd out about them

Man did not do this ; he was too busy or too careful , and died out in the open ; just dropped in his tracks , and did not think how inconvenient it would be for us— this neglect on his part to become a fossil . So his remains are very seldom found . We have made a series of drawings of the types

l re of sku l which are known , and which are being

ae ferred to constantly by the arch ologists , and which our readers are sure to meet if they begin to

8 Pitheca t o us study seriously . Fig . is of the n hr p 37 Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age

-i erectus . 18 91 , or the ﬁrst of the sub men In Prof.

E. l Dubois found the roof of a sku l, two molar

- teeth , and a thigh bone (femur) at Trinil in Java . The position is interesting because of its relation to Australia and Tasmani a . The remains were

I i l found n r ver deposit of ate Pliocene , or early

Pleistocene , character . These were found in con junction with the bones of many of the lower animals of the same period ; but there were no implements .

The brain - pan of Pithecanthropus exceeds that

an - of y ape , and equals about two thirds that of E modern man . Prof . G . lliot Smith thinks that its features prove that the man belonged to the human

a . f mily , and enjoyed rudimentary powers of speech

" : l an Darwin , writing of the Fuegians , said The guage of those people , according to our notions , scarcely deserves to be called articul ate . Captain

Cook has compared it to a man clearing his throat , but certainly no European ever cleared his throat

a k with so many hoarse , guttur l , and clic ing sounds The thigh - bone of Pithecanthropus shows that he walked upright , but the teeth are more simian than human . Pithecanthropus was a link between gibbon and man . He probably re 38

r n e e M n St epya , Chell an , Ach ulean e

treated to the trees when he was alarmed , and may

l or have contrived rough she ters nests there, but

. scien of this , of course , we cannot be sure The tists went to Java because Europe was deserted by

- the man like apes in early Pliocene times , as the temperature became colder . A more genial climate than ours was necessary for the development of this link , which , with brain , added to bone and muscle , was to connect them with us .

It is sad that Prof . Dubois could not ﬁnd any tools or implements associated with Pithecan th ro us p , because it might have helped to clear up E the knotty question of the oliths . These are ﬂ very primitive int implements (see Fig . which one school of archaeologists say must have been made by very primitive men ; the Opposing school contesting that they have been produced by natural causes .

Our readers will , we think, agree with us that i the early ﬂ nts (as Fig . the human origin of hi l w ch is unquestioned , cou d not have been pro duced at once . Thous ands of years in all proba bility passed before early man got into his dull head the idea O f shape . At ﬁrst he must have used any stick , stone , or shell that came handy . Prob 41 Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age ably happy accident came to his aid ; he broke a

flint and found that it had a keen cutting edge . At the identical moment that it occurred to him to turn this flint into a rough tool by trimming it into shape , he took the first step towards civilizing himself . W hen man discovered the use of fire , he had an ally which not onl y cooked his food and warmed his body , but would at the same time have sharp ened and hardened a stick of wood , so that it could be used as a spear . Put any piece of wood in a fire and char the end ; when scraped it is pointed in shape .

P e- P lae lithic M r a o an . . an In , by Mr J Reid Moir , interesting suggestion is put forward as to the de v elopment of the ﬂint implement . We have made

9 ll . . a drawing (Fig . ) to i ustrate this Mr Moir thinks that primitive man ﬁr st used a split ﬂint as 1 .

Its base would have had a sharp edge all round .

" re Perhaps in use this edge got chipped , with the sul t that it became sharper . The ﬂaking may then have been developed by man to make a scr aper . In 2 this is done on both sides , with a resulting third 3 edge or keel . By ﬂaking all over the face was

- Obtained , and this is called the rostro carinate

3 . 4 . 1 2 type , , and all have ﬂat bases In the 42 re n e ea e ea Men St pya , Ch ll n , Ach ul n

off edges of th e base have been knocked , and a type is obtained which is like the Chellean implement

we shall see later .

’ - or Fig . 2 gives a rostro carinate eagle s beak ﬂint

in more detail . 8 Our drawing of Pithecanthropus (Fig . ) has been based on th e plaster cast at the Natural His

tory Museum at South Kensington . Here can be

studied the fossil remains of man , and there is a

ﬁne collection of casts of primitive skulls . In

oh drawing from these , it is evident that one may tain an expression of character which may be either

too brutal or too civilized , but the shape of the l sku l remains , and this determines the poise of the

head , and many general characteristics of the face . We do not know if Pithecanthropus ever lived on a the b nks of the Somme , or Thames , because no human remains of his type have been found in

England . His cousins may have existed nearer

the equator in Africa , and their descendants then have found their way across the isthmus we referred E to into urope . 0 Our next illustration (Fig . 1 ) is of a very cele

brated a nth s person , the Piltdown Man , ropu

D awsoni th e , or the Man of Dawn , so named after 43 EverydayLife in th e Old Stone Age

n . his ﬁ der , Mr Charles Dawson . We shoul d be a very proud of nthropus , because he is the ﬁrst known Englishman . In 1912 men were digging for gravel , and came across a skul l which they broke up and threw away ; a rather brutal thing to do , and in this case supremely foolish as well . One piece of the skull came into the possession of Mr .

Dawson , who , recognizing its value , at once made

e search for the r maining portions . Other parts of

and e the skull were found , a lower jaw , lat r on a 1912 canine tooth . Since scientiﬁc men all over the

e world have writt n articles , indulged in friendly controversy , and found out all sorts of things about the Piltdown man . The remains were found in old

e e river , or plat au , grav ls , at Piltdown in the Sus

a e un sex weald , the g and formation of which is

th e O f certain , but in gravels are fossil remains ani

e e Pleist mals dating from late Plioc n , and early o

ﬂints cene , times , and as well the roughly worked

E a called oliths ; and some later ones , Pal eoliths of an

e Plio early type . Both the fossil remains of the lat cene and the Eoliths are much water - worn and rubbed , as if they had been rolled along , whereas the early Pleistocene fossils and the early Palaeo

- liths have sharp edges and are not water worn . 44 — FIG I . tre an . 4 S py Bouch er or H and - axe

I I —M in Fir F G a e. . 3. k g

0 .

' — - M ach e r od u s th e Sabre t th ed T i er. F IG . 1 . —T h e Pilt 5 , oo g FIG , 1 1 ’ down M an s Bone l Imp ement.

Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age

Neanderthal type whom we shall meet later on .

The brain capacity is about 1300 cubic centimetres . which is about equal to the smaller human brain of today ; but with this evident increase in brain power , he still retained a very animal lower half

- . n to his face The cani e tooth is ape like in shape , and would have been used as a weapon for Offence or defence . The jaws stick out and give the face what is called a prognathous character . The

extraordl naril 10 12 skull is y thick , to millimetres , 6 as against 5 to in modern man . The Piltdown o man could , and pr bably did , butt a rival away , but notwithstanding all this he was on the upward grade . The skull is what the scientists call mesatice

h alic 78 p in shape , cephalic index about , and , as we shall be constantly meeting this and other terms

r . used in elation to skulls , we will explain them now The cephalic index is the ratio or percentage of the l breadth of the head to the ength , the latter being taken as one hundred .

u s i f — lic c h lic l n Sk ll with ndex o 70 75 D o h o ep a ( o g) . — 75 8 0 M esaticeph alic (inter m di e ate) . 8 0—8 B ch c h lic r und 5 ra y ep a ( o ) . 48 n e ea e ea Men Strepya , Ch ll n , Ach ul n

135 For example , assuming a skull has a breadth of 135 " 100 18 0 millimetres and a length of , we get 18 0

cephalic index of 75 . If our readers have a large pair of calipers , they can measure up their friends , and inform them what their cephalic index happens to be .

One detail about the Piltdown man is , that the

O f scientists think, by the shape his brain , that he

- was right handed . This makes him seem much more intimate .

E ae . As well as the oliths and Pal oliths , Mr Daw son discovered a very extraordinary implement

a - m de of the thigh bone of an elephant , and this cannot be later than early Pleistocene , because the bone of which it is made came from Elephas meri

d onalis E. anti uns E i , or g , which lived in urope in late Pliocene or early Pleistocene times . There were larger elephants than the Mammoth, who comes later , and had need to have been to provide thigh - bones of sufﬁcient size to make this imple

. 16 4 1 ment It is inches long , inches wide, and to 2 inches thick , shaped rather like the blade of a

- bat , and not water worn ; so , like the early Palaeo liths , its age must be the same as the gravel in which 49 Everyday Life in th e Old Stone Age

it was found . The use of the implement is un

a i known . There is model of t at the Natural 11 History Museum , and we give a cut (Fig . ) which has been drawn from this . It will be no ticed that the implement appears to have been perforated at one end , so a thong may have been

attached here , and the implement thrown at small f game , and then retrieved rom the thick under l growth by being hau ed back , but this seems a clumsy way when stones were at hand . 2 Our next drawing (Fig . 1 ) looks rather like a new design for the four of spades . This is not the case ; it shows the Piltdown man making ﬂint pl ements . The ones illustrated are about 3% inches long . The stone held in the right hand acted as a hammer, and with this ﬂakes were

O ff t o knacked , and shape given the implement .

Flint ﬂaking is an art, as can be easily tested by trying to make an implement oneself . It is a

a off comparatively e sy matter to strike a ﬂake, but a very difﬁt one to shape it. The actual

" a a nd idea of symmetry marks a great adv nce , is the beginning of a sense of proportion ; a feeling that the implement will not only cut as well as the

ul rough ﬂake, but that it wo d look better , and be 50 — Pi wn M a makin Fl i nt Im l ement. 1 2 . l td n F IG . o g p

e Strepyan, Chell an, Acheulean Men

more pleasant to handle , if it were shaped . It is this shaping which makes us feel that the Eoliths

must have been made by humans , because we can not believe that they woul d arrive at the stage 12 shown in Fig . without endless experiment . These ﬂints O f the Piltdown man are presentable looking Objects ; h e has begun to take a pride in his

e k i work , which , wh n you come to thin about it, s the most satisfactory emotion that boy or man can

experience . ents would have had all s orts of

eas S a us can be mad harp as a r zor , and

e ﬁ yserved as the knives of the day, and were used

e bone \di u i - nus beast , scrap a , g pp g t Flint 1s extraordinarily hard until quite recently it was used in connection with

steel and tinder to produce ﬁre . If a piece is struck

against steel , minute fragments of the latter ﬂy O ff, heated by the blow to such an extent that they burn

in th e air as sparks . Prehistoric man probably O h

tained s his ﬁre in thi way , using , instead of steel ,

a marcasite , an iron sulphide found in ssociation with

ﬂint, or he may have done so by friction , rubbing

one piece of wood up and down in a groove in an

other piece , until the dust ignited (see Fig . 53 Everyday Life in th e Old Stone Age

ll n w We wi o refer back to our diagram (Fig . and go into the detail O f the implements which are n found o the banks of the Somme . In the gravels

ra . 3 ﬂints f of ter ce No , the worked are said to be o

- Stre an or . py , pre Chellean , design Strepy is a place in Belgium . The implements are roughly ll ﬂaked , and genera y have some part of the original crust remaining . Fig . 14 shows a rough form of

v . l boucher , a term in ented by Prof Sol as , in honour of M . Boucher de Perthes , who ﬁrst found Th worked ﬂints on the Somme . e French call

c de oin - this a oup p g; hand axe is another term . i The boucher was held in the hand , but, we th nk ,

u not as a dagger , point down ; we say this , beca se l l in the co lection of our friend , Harold Fa kner of l Farnham , all the points are intact , and on y the side edges Show signs O f wear . We think the butt was held in the palm of the hand , with the ﬁrst

l . ﬁnger a ong one edge , to cut with the other Strepyan man also used ﬂints fashioned for scraping fat off the skins of the animals he killed , and the bark O ff all the odd pieces of wood that he must have needed . His spears would have been of wood . When he lived on the banks of the Som e

com in the First Interglacial period , he had as 54

r n e ea e ea Men St ep ya , Ch ll n , Ach ul n

idi nali s E . mer o panions two huge elephants , and

E . an i uus t q ; the hippopotamus , rhinoceros , and

- E. stenoni s . sabre toothed tiger ; and a horse , The

anti uns naturalists tell us that the teeth of E . g were adapted to eating the small branches and foliage

e of trees . This gives an inter sting indication of the

Strepyan climate . It must have been warm and genial for these southern animals to have ﬂourished . How man fended for himself we cannot tell ; armed nl o y with a boucher , which he perhaps hafted as a l spear , he cou d have but little chance against an

15 hi . elephant , feet gh to the top of the shoulder

- If looks are any criterion , the sabre toothed tiger , l M achaerodus (Fig . must have been an evi beast . There is a plaster cast of one at the Natural

History Museum . M ach aerodus was widely dis tributed and existed in England with the cave men who came later on ; this we know because his teeth have been found in Kent ’s Cavern and Cresswell

Caves . Man coul d onl y have combated such animals by craft ; ﬁre and traps were his weapons , and one expects that he was not too proud to eat ’ 1 the remains of the tiger s feast . Fig . 6 is O f a pit

in th e e E fall use by nativ s of British ast Africa .

Stre an e Labour was plentiful in py days , and very 57 Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age

body lent a hand . To dig the pit would not have

been beyond the wit of prehistoric man , and the stakes could have been sharpened and the points hardened by ﬁre . Such a pit would have been a beginning of the long battle between brain and

one mere bulk . This would have been way in which prehistoric man Obtained the meat that he

. carniv needed for his food He was , of course, as o rous as his foe the tiger . H e possessed neither

ﬂocks , nor herds , and did not grow any corn .

th e Darwin tells us that Gaucho in the Pampas ,

h . for mont s together, touches nothing but beef But ” V they eat , I observe , a ery large proportion of fat .

Again , Darwin gives us a splendid picture of

’ how to support life , when there is not a butcher s

sh O p just round the corner , but you have to catch

I your supper before you can cook it . He was n

H is the Falkland Islands at th e time . Gaucho

separated a fat cow from a herd of wild cattle ,

a and caught it with his l zo. It was then ham

" s v trung , and killed by dri ing a knife into the head ” of the spinal marrow . These details are given c ’ because , when you are a prehistori man , you can t

afford to be sensitive . A large circular piece of t ﬂesh was then cut out of the back, wi h the skin 68 —Ch ll an u h er o r IG 1 8 . e e F . Bo c

- H and axe.

IG 1 O val Im l ement . F . 9. p

re an e ea e ea Men St py , Ch ll n, Ach ul n

the attached ; this was roasted on the embers , with

c hide downwards and in the form of a sau er, so that none of the gravy was lost .

Though the weather was wet , the Gauchos man aged to light their ﬁre . First with their ﬂint and steel they get a spark on to thei r pi ece of charred rag or tinder . Then they sought beneath the

O f u tufts grass and b shes for a few dry twigs , and these they rubbed into ﬁbres ; then surrounding

’ them with coarser twigs , something like a bird s

e nest , th y put the rag with its spark of ﬁre in the l middle and covered it up . The nest being then he d

e up to the wind , by degrees it smok d more and ”

r . mo e , and at last burst out in ﬂames

" s For fuel the Gauchos found what , to my ur

as prise , made nearly hot a ﬁre as coals , this was the skeleton of a bullock lately killed , from which ” h e the ﬂesh had been picked by t carrion hawks .

Darwin enjoyed his supper , and recommended

carne con cuero.

CHE LLEAN M AN

’ l The next stage in man s deve opment , which is

ae ll recognized by the arch ologists , is that ca ed 61 Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age

” Chellean . This name comes from Chelles , on the Seine, near Paris . There has been consider able controversy as to what Chellean man was like . E ll Here in ngland at Galley Hi , Swanscombe , 18 8 8 Kent, a skeleton was found in , which we illus trate (Fig . and which Sir Arthur Keith con tends is that of a Chellean man . The head is of

. ul great length , but not very high The sk l is very

i e n t th ck, the ey brow ridges o nearly so much de v eloped as in the later Neanderthal type . The

u th e chin is beginning to be q ite modern , but teeth

ll n are primitive . It may we be that here in E g land in Chellean times the men were developed who in the end became homo sapi ens . Chellean implements are found in Swans combe which cor respond to those found in the sands above th e lower gravels of the second terrace of the Somme (Fig .

Later types are found in the ﬁrst terrace .

The boucher (Fig . 18 ) has developed smce

Strepyan times . It was still formed by knocking ’ O fl flakes a flint nodule , and remains the most use ful tool of prehistoric man ; but the Chellean

- boucher is quite a well made implement , and the man who made it was becoming a good craftsman . His ﬂint work was far in advance of that of the 62

S r n e ea Men t epya , Chellean , Ach ul n

Tasmanians . Sometimes it has a thick butt end , and a longer point, while others are oval in shape as im . 19 . Fig The earlier the type, the thicker the 20 plement . Fig . shows a woman using a ﬂint

ne O f l scraper , o the most usefu implements of prehistoric man . The people who know how to make these ﬂints were widely distributed . Prof . Sollas says that bouchers are found in all the continents of the world , except Australia . Many hundreds of ﬂint implements are often

n fou d in the same gravel pit , and this is thought to prove that large numbers of prehistoric people camped together . This is doubtful ; food was

. O f f scarce It is , course , always di ﬁcult to remem ber that .an interglacial period extended over thou

O f nk sands years , so that if a river ba was a favourite

- th e l camping place , tools cou d have been dropped year after year , and covered up by gravel and sand

- in times of ﬂood . We dig these to day , and forget the long time which it took for the gravel to be

deposited . Another point to be borne in mind is m that , so far , all the remains of prehistoric an that

we have noted have been found near water . The men of the river drift had to camp by the side of a 65 Everyday Life In the Old Stone Age

e s river, or lake, becaus they had not any pot or pans in which to store water . Thousands of years passed before man made pottery .

Another point to remember is , the one which was pointed out to the nineteenth - century geologists in regard to the same sort of fossils found in the rocks in different parts of the world : these were not all living organisms at the same time . Life pro ceeds from a centre and spreads . SO this widely distributed Chellean civil ization did not start all l over the wor d at one given minute . If it started

o in India , or Africa , it to k time for it to reach the

Wey , by the isthmus across the Straits of Dover .

Prehistoric man was a great traveller , and that by the most urgent necessity of all : the need to ﬁnd food . Darwin mentions two Spanish girls taken

" captive by Indians . From their account they

must have come from Salta, a distance in a straight

line of nearly one thousand miles . This gi ves one a grand idea of the immense territory over which the Indians roam SO it was with prehistoric

man . Remember he started as a hunter , then de

v el o ed p into a herdsman , then became a farmer , l and sett ed down to guard his possessions . Re C member as well that we all the industry Chellean ,

66 tre n e n S pya , Chellean, Acheul an Me

a not bec use it originated at Chelles , but by reason ofthe wonderful way the French archaeologists have explored the remains of prehistoric man ; they have done this so well that we have adopted their names

for want of better ones of our own . England must

have been an outpost of Chellean civilization . Chellean man had to encounter much the same

r n sort of animals as those of St epya times . The huge Elephas antiquus remained as a problem for

the hunters to tackle . They probably employed the pitfall to trap animals ; the Australians still

catch emus in this way , or they may have been the inventors of another device which is still employed

by native races . This consists of a large and heavy piece of wood , which is suspended above a path , pointing downwards , by a grass rope . Fig . 21 shows how the animal , pushing its way along , l cracks the rope , with the resu t that the spear falls on to the spinal column . We may turn to Darwin to gain information as

to the appearance of savage races . Writing of the

" Fuegians he said : Their only garment consists of

uanaco a mantle made of q skin , with the wool out side ; this they wear just thrown Over their shoul l ders . But the skin c oak appears to have been 67 Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age

3 . . wi party frock , and not for general use Dar n ll saw them in their canoes ; the sleet fa ing , and

e thawing on their naked bodies . He ref rs to the

" Fuegian Wigwam which resembles , in size and

- . o dimensions , a hay cock It merely c nsists of a v few broken branches stuck in the ground , and ery imperfectly thatched on one side with a few tufts of grass and rushes . At Goeree Roads I saw a place where one of these naked men had slept , which absolutely Offered no more cover than ” th e form of a hare .

The Tasmanians - made much the same form of

e sh lter , using bark instead of grass and rushes , and 2 we have shown the type in Fig . 2 . Treat the drawing with respect , because it shows house NO . i 1 . e They also w nt about qu te naked , using occa i ll s ona y a fur cloak . Both the Fuegians and the Tasmanians liberally anointed their bodies and

h e heads with grease mixed with t ochreous earths . In this way they gained a certain protection from the weather , and it helped to keep them clean .

Earth is a ﬁn e deodorizer . There is a good tale

e told of a party of Tasmanians giv n some soup , on the top of which ﬂoated fat ; this they scooped ﬂ’ i O w th their hands , and put on their heads , but 68 r an e ea . e ea Men St epy , Ch ll n Ach ul n

they did not drink the soup . Primitive man almost invariably roasts or bakes his meat . Later on we give instances of human remains being found , buried with red ochre , for use in the spirit world . This points to the covering of grease

c e and o hr , having developed from a protection into a decoration of the body . Darwin wrote of the Fuegians : The O ld man ll had a ﬁ et of white feathers tied round his head ,

en which partly conﬁned his black , coarse , and tangled hair . His face was crossed by two broad transverse bars ; one painted bright red , reached from ear to ear and included the upper lip ; the other , white like chalk, extended above and parallel to the ﬁrst , so that even his eyelids were thus ” col oured . We have just referred to skeletons being found

im le with colour for decorating the body , and p ments for use in the spirit world , and such burials point to a belief in a future life . But we can ﬁnd no traces as yet of such a belief on the part of the

FitzR f B Chellean man . Captain oy O the eagle could never ascertain that the Fuegians had any f distinct belief in a future li e . When driven by l extreme hunger they killed and ate the O d women , 69 Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age

before their dogs , because , as they said , Doggies

e catch otters , old women no In the Uganda, b

a ﬁ fore human sacri ce , the victim was made to drink

from a magic cup to destroy his soul ﬁrst . A hor

rible idea , but yet proving that even the most

ul e degraded types as a r e beli ve in a future life .

Ch ell eans As to what the believed , we cannot

say.

ACH E U LEAN MAN

We can now turn to Acheul ean types of imple H l ments . ere we sti l have the boucher (Fig . but it is a much better one ; thinner and more ﬁnely

ﬂaked , with a truer edge . Scrapers were used as l well , but Acheu ean man does not seem tohave had many more sorts of implements than his Chellean

ancestor . It must be borne in mind that these names are terms used to denote certain stages in

the development of ﬂint Implements . In reality

O f e the design these was a continu d growth , and

a prehistoric man did not , in any one year , le ve O ff making Chellean typ es and introduce a new

Acheul ean fashion .

In the description of the sub - aerial deposits on

the terraces of the Somme (p . we noted that 70

Stre an ea M n py , Chellean , Acheul n e

the earliest Acheulean types are found in the sands

and gravels at the base of the lower Derm , and the later types in the lowest strata of the Older Loess .

and This Older Loess is in three layers , in the middle

and upper layers no implements are found . It is supposed to have been deposited in glacial times so it seems as if the weather gradually bec ame too

V cold for man to camp by the riverside . This iew is borne out by the remains of the animals found and

in the implements . In the sand and gravel of the r ea lier Acheulean times , we have our old friend

E . anti uns g and the red deer, both southern animals ; but in the later Acheulean of the lowest

We layer of the older Loess , meet for the ﬁrst time ,

E. rimi enius Rhi noceros ti cho p g (the mammoth) ,

rhi nus ll - e (the woo y coated one) , hors , and lion . These were northern animals who came south as the weather became colder and the Fourth Glacial

period drew on . i E . ant uus The mammoth was not so large as q ,

and closely resembled the existing Indian elephant ,

s excepting only the tusk , which are very long and

curved . Its teeth were more adapted for eating

coarse grasses than the foliage of trees . The coun

try was becoming barer and bleaker, and trees were 73 Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age

scarce . Its curved tusks perhaps acted as hay rakes , and helped to gather up food . Its warm

e e coat and thick skin , with a lay r of fat und r, pro

th e tected it from cold weather . We know all ab tfut e the mammoth , because whole carcases hav been dug up in the frozen Arctic regions , with the

ﬂesh , skin , and furry coats , protected through the ages by the ice and snow in which they were em 24 bedded . Our sketch (Fig . ) gives a general idea 5 . 2 of this animal , and Fig shows the woolly coated rhinoceros .

e th e If reference is mad to Chart , it will be seen that during Acheulean times th e weather was get

ice- ting colder , and as the cap crept down , so these animals from the northern regions retreated before it . Man appears for the same reason to have looked about for warmer shelter than the open - air camps , and to have retreated to the caves and caverns .

a - s Before we pass on to the C ve dweller , let us sum up what we have found out about prehi storic man , and draw some comparisons . We say that he was a nomad and a hunter , but unless we are

l cture careful to think a little , the mental p we form is of some one rather like ourselves ; a little 74

Everyday Life in th e Old Stone Age ent as n co tline, the Tasmania s had come from the

nl i r mai and into Austral a and , ret eating again be fore stronger races , found their way in the end

so O ff into Tasmania, before it was much cut as it

is now. There may have been an isthmus across

s Eu th e Ba s Strait, as there was in rope across

Straits of Dover . At some later period thi s dis

a ni appe red , and the Tasma ans were left free to remain the simple primitive folk they were when

ﬁrst discovered .

They had not the use of iron , and their only

w ﬂi and tools ere made of nt , very rough ones at

" ” that . They had not any boucher which was as good a piece of work as that of Chellean man (Fig . Generally the Tasmanians went about quite naked , but on occasions wore a skin cloak . Kan garoo skins were dressed as ru gs to sit upon . Wet and and cold did not appear to harm them , their

- e as . 22 e . hous s , Fig , were the mer st break winds When in 18 31 the miserable remainder of the natives were exiled to Flinders Island , and lodged in huts , it was found that they caught cold far more readily than when living in the open . Like the Fuegians

a as in their native st te, they gre ed their bodies , and anointed themselves with red ochre ; this gave a 76 r M n St epyan, Chellean , Acheulean e

certain protection . They were also fond of making

l e neck aces of shells , and ornamented th ir bodies by forming patterns of scars (cicatrization) left by cuts made with a sharp ﬂint . They were nomads moving about the country in search of food ; this meant that in hard times the very O ld and inﬁrm

someth es people were left to die , and the babies had to be sacriﬁced . In hunting game like kangaroo they used plain

. 26 . spears , as Fig , made of a hard wood This is not quite the simple thing it seems . Pithecan th ropus would have picked up any long stick to hit with , and it may have slipped from his hand . He then discovered that unless one end was heavier than the other, it did not follow a very straight l line of ﬂight ; it might knock down a bird , but wou d not pierce with its point the skin of an animal , so through the long ages the Tasmanian spear de

v el o ed . p This was cut, trimmed , and scraped with ﬂint . Straightened by being passed over a

ﬁre, the teeth were used instead of the later shaft 46 straightener (Fig . ) The end was charred by

ﬁre , and so hardened , and then pointed by scrap ing . The point was at the heavy end ; 20 inches 3 from this the circumference was inches , in the 77 Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age

21 2 middle 4 inches , and inches from the end onl y

. 11 11 inch The total length was feet inches . w The Tasmanian could thro this , and kill an 40 50 animal at from to yards , and did not use a

- . 34 . throwing stick, as Fig Unlike the Australians , they used neither boomerangs nor shields . Their other weapon was the waddy , or wooden club , 2 6 about feet inches long , and they threw stones with great accuracy . The Tasmanian wooden spear had its counter

e part in England in the Old Ston Age . In a very

e interesting book just publish d , written by Mr .

M an d his P . an ast O . G . S Crawford , and called , is an il lustration of what is probably the only known palaeolithic wooden Object . It is apparently the broken head of a wooden spear about 15 inches 1 long, pointed at one end , and about % inches diameter at the other . It looks exactly as if the end had been broken O ff the Tasmanian spear

a E . in (Fig and was found at Cl cton in ssex,

anti uns th e E . g bed in association with an early type of ﬂint implement .

e E It may well be , that her in ngland , Chellean man hunted and killed smaller game than this southern elephant ; to have attacked E . antiguns 78

re n e he ea Men St pya , Ch llean, Ac ul n with such a spear woul d have been to add so triﬂing an injury to such a tremendous insult, that the huge beast woul d have turned on th e hunter with disastrous results ; probably the pitfall was the method adopted (p .

’ We think the illustration in Mr . Crawford s book is the ﬁrst which has appeared of this Clacton

e Spear . The book its lf consists of a series of bril l ae iant essays on the whole Art of Arch ology , and should be read by any boy , or girl , who wishes to acquire the proper atmosphere for more detailed study . l The Tasmanians were wonderfu trackers , with

and . very acute sight , hearing , smell

They ate the animals and birds they caught . Without any preliminaries these were thrown on to a wood ﬁre which singed the hair and feathers and

- half cooked the carcase . Then the bodies were W cut apart ith a flint and gutted , and the cooking ’ ofl finished by spitting the joints on sticks , and toasting over the fire . A little wood ash served instead of salt . The meat was always roast , l because there were not any pots to boi in .

- ﬁ sh The Tasmanians ate shell as well , and these the women caught by diving into the sea and

a 8 1 Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age

searching the rocks under water . They had not any

nets , hooks , or lines . The women were not treated ll very we , and had to do all the other work while the l men hunted . They sat behind their ords at meals ,

s who , reclining on one arm in Roman fashion , pas ed the tougher morsels to their dutiful spouses . The Tasmanians had one notable possession in their raft . This was not hollow like a boat , but made of cigar- shaped rolls of very light bark like cork . One large central roll had two smaller ones lashed to it with grass rope to prevent rolling ; see section on Fig . 27 ; so that it was a raft in canoe shape . With these , or in them , they crossed from headland to headland , and the type may have been a survival of the earlier boats by which their an

estors - c found their way down from the mainland , and bridged the gaps between the islands , if the isthmus we referred to did not exist . e This raft is of great inter st , because at some time or other it must have been a notable develop

P nthr s . ith eca O u ment p , if he ever went boating, did so on any ﬂoating log, and discovered to his

be disgust that it needed pointing, if it was to paddled along , and also that some sort of arrange ment was necessary to prevent it rolling over in 8 2

Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age

They made grass rope and string , by twisting

. 28 . long wiry grass or ﬁbrous bark , as Fig This

illustration is of great interest , in that it leads up to the development of the spinning spindle shown 40 in Fig . . Primitive man , of course , used sinews

and hide thongs for ties . They also made clumsy

reed baskets , and at the British Museum is a water carrying vessel, made by skewering up the corners

of the leaf of a large seaweed kelp . It looks rather

e - lik a mob cap . With a grass rope they climbed

high trees . They passed the rope round them selves and the tree ; cut holes in the bark for their

big toes , ﬁrst on one side , and then the other , and

as they went up , jerked the rope and themselves

up the tree together . It is not known if they had any idea of trade or barter , but they did not grow any crops , or possess any domesticated animals . They were without any overlords , laws , or regular government .

If they ailed , an incision was made in the body, to let the pain escape . The dead were sometimes

e burned , and sometim s placed in hollow trees .

r After bu ning , the remains might be buried , but the skull retained and worn as a memento , or at

be other times this was buried separately . They 8 4 re an e a e ea M n St py , Ch lle n , Ach ul n e

lieVed in a life after death on a pleasant island with

their ancestors . We will ﬁnish O ff this account of the Tasmanians by an amusing description of one of the ways they

" had of settling their quarrels : The parties ap

proach one another face to face , and folding their

arms across their breasts , shake their heads (which

’ occasionally come in contact) in each other s faces , uttering at the same time the most vociferous and angry expressions , until one or the other is ex ” h austed . , or his feelings of anger subside An extremely sensible method , and amusing for the

nl o ookers , which is more than can be said of civilized methods of quarrelling . It is not very creditable to the civilized white l races , that the Tasmanians shou d have been used so badly that they have now become extinct .

T ru anini 18 77 g , the last survivor , died in , and , we

O f hope , found the dream the pleasant island and th e kindly ancestors come true . A nation can die di of a broken heart , even as in viduals ; or shall we say, they lose heart . Think of a people who have supported life with no other aid than spears ,

ﬂints waddies , and chipped ; then other people l come in ships , with a wonderfu apparatus for liv 8 5 Everyday Life in th e Old Stone Age

ing , which makes the sticks and stones seem foolish

and inadequate . The old peoplenaturally lose inter

e on est and heart, and the d sire to go living , or be

- u come hangers o , and so come to an end . All of v " which is ery sad . We have written enough to prove that Chellean l u andAcheu ean men , in their ﬂint bo chers , possessed tools with which they coul d make the spears that they needed to kill game for food ; their mode of liv in i g must have been very s im lar to the Tasmanians . Shall we now try to conjure up a picture of a tribe

E ul here in ngland in Chellean and Ache ean times , and ﬁnd out if we can how they supported life "

The tribe was like a large family in those days .

r mi ul The e ght have been a headman , who wo d

e l have be n the bo dest of the hunters , but little if

any system of government . The women did all th e the work, and looked after children , and meant

’

more to them than the father , whose place was

with the hunters . SO much was this the case that custom grew up in savage races of tracing descent

’ on the mother s side . The tribe would not have been particularly

quarrelsome, unless their neighbours trespassed on

- is insti u their hunting grounds . War a civilized t 8 6

re an e ea e ea Men St py , Ch ll n , Ach ul n

ul tion, based as a r e on the desire to obtain some

’ other nation s property . Prehistoric man had

little temptation in this way . Our tribe may have

camped on the banks O f the Wey for the summer .

one The river was a much bigger than it is now , and

one hopes they found the fishing good . In any cas e they would only have had the wooden spear to l ance the fish with , and a flint boucher to cut it up e afterwards . There would have b en berries to

e t a , the roots of bracken and ferns , and nuts in the

l l . autumn , crab app es , wi d cherries , and sloes The bee had to give up his store to greedy hands that

ru tore the comb , and c nched it up without waiting l to run out the honey . There were snails and shel

l and . ﬁsh , grubs and beet es , luscious caterpillars

of Greatest joy all a dead elephant, or hippo , or

perhaps a rhinoceros , then would the tribe have sat

down , and eaten their way through the carcase if f it happened to be a little bit high , we need not sni f,

because we still like pheasant in the same condition . But rough plenty would not last ; hard times and

l on th e winter wou d come , and tribe range far and wide in search of food . They woul d grow lean

l . ribbed as wo ves , and just as savage They would be driven by hunger to attack living game, and in 8 9 Everyday Life in th e Old Stone Age

ul th e the ﬁght some wo d die that others might live . The survivors at the meal would not have pre sented a pleasant spectacle ; they would have tom

the beast to pieces , and eaten it raw . i It must have been a hard l fe, yet the Call of the

- Wild still takes the big game hunter to Africa , and

the explorer to Polar Regions . The sick and ailing

went to the wall , because little could be done for

. n them If a tooth ached , it continued to do so , u til

it stopped of its own accord . Chellean man did

not practise dentistry . Notwithstanding all this ,

he was not a degraded savage, because this means

a falling from high estate . He possessed the soul which makes man the restless individual that he

- still is . Just as the inventor of to day has con

th e quered the air , and seeks to harness all powers

of nature , so Chellean man experimented with his

ﬂints e . chipped , and found out the way to support lif

indiﬂerent There were doubtless good , bad , and

men , as there are now ; some who push the world

along, and others who retard its progress , but

whether he hated , loved , hunted , or fought , our

ancestor was ﬁghting our battles as well as his own , and thr ough all the thousands of years slowly

s truggling on an upward path . 90

CH APTER III

TH E CAV E - DW ELLERS

O UR - next period is thatof the Cave dwellers , or

M ousterians , so called after the cave of Le

In Moustier , the valley of the Vezere , Dordogne

(Fig . H ere again we are indebted to the

F ae s rench arch ologi ts , who have examined the pre historic remains so carefull y that we have to ‘ had

. A adopt their names t Le Moustier , the ﬁ ver has in course of time cut its way down through the limestone , which is left in cliff formation at the

’ . th e cliﬂs cav sides In , erns were formed by surface water ﬁnding its way down from the top and wear th ing away pockets of softer stone , or by e river hi cutting out holes in the banks . T s left the caves ready for the occupation of man , and , as the

h e weather became colder , looked about and found

- ready made houses , a thing we should like to do

- nh to day . When prehistoric man ﬁrst i abited

ﬂo d - these , they were just above the o level of the river ; tod ay they are often high up on the banks , 92

Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age

These discoveries were very important , because they enabled the archaeologists to be quite sure of their facts in respect to other skeletons which had

. 18 57 been found In , a specimen was discovered

e a D ii ssel in a limestone cav at Neanderth l , near

f e dorf, Germany ; un ortunately, as in the cas of the Piltdown man , the workmen who found it , not

Re e . r alizing its value, broke up the skeleton member the Java man was not discovered until

18 9 1 1912 scien , and the Piltdown man in , so the

’ tists were not prepared for the Neanderth aler in 57 . Some said the latter individual must have suffered ” from something on the brain , to have had such an extraordinary shape to his head , but Huxley the great Englishman and others recognized the skull h as human . From time to time various ot er skulls were found , until that of La Chapelle aux Saints conﬁrmed the opinion that all belonged to one race , which is called the Neanderthal or Mousterian (H omo Neanderthalensis)

Our drawing (Fig . 30) shows what these men l ooked like , and has been made from the casts of the skulls of the Neanderthal and La Chapelle aux

Saints men at the Natural History Museum . The most noticeable characteristic of the Mousterian 96

Everyday Life in th e Old Stone Age The boucher disappeared soon after the begin ning of the Mousterian period ; this in Acheul ean times was made by knocking flakes off a nodul e of k flint . The flakes were used for ma ing small scrapers and the like . Mousterian man appears to have dressed one side of his implement first on l the nodu e, and then to have detached it as a large

ﬂake . This , again , is an interesting fact , and shows that man was begi nning to economize in the use of material . The weather too was becoming

ll ul colder , and the hi s wo d have been covered with

lin snow . F t is only found in chalk of the creta ceous beds . In many parts of the country it has all been cut away by the action of water , and the ﬂints taken with it to form gravel in the river ter

ui races lower down . Flint s table for making im pl ements must have been valuable to prehistoric

Stuface man , and a stray ﬂint from the is not so good for ﬂaking as one quarried out of chalk . SO for some it meant a long journey , and encounters

en route with woolly rhinoceros , to Obtain the raw material for his industry , then perhaps the barter

ﬂints ing of skins in exchange for the , and a toil some carrying home of the heavy stones . Perhaps it occurred to Mousterian man that if instead of 100 T he Cave- Dwellers

wasting a whole large ﬂint to make one boucher,

ul im le he used the ﬂakes , he co d make several p

ments out of one nodule This is what he did , and

it marks one more step up the ladder .

- We call these Levallois ﬂakes . Sharp pointed

ﬂints are also found notched on one side , evi

- dently for use as lance heads (Fig .

Spherical balls of limestone have been found , and it is thought that these may have been used as

bolas . Darwin describes the bolas used by the

Gauchos of Monte Video , South America . The

s . bolas , or ball , are of two kinds The simplest ,

which is chieﬂy used for catching ostriches , con sists of two round stones covered with leather and untied by a thin plaited thong about eight feet long ; the other kind differs only in having three

balls untied by thongs to a common centre . The

Gaucho holds the smallest of the three in his hand , and whirls the other two round and round his head ;

s then , taking aim , ends them like chain shot re

volving through the air . The balls no sooner k n stri e any object than , wi ding round it , they

cross each other and become ﬁrmly hitched .

The Gaucho lives on horseback , but the Eskimo

on goes foot , and he uses a bolas with seven or 101 Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age

e eight cords , and attach d stones , and this he uses to bring down birds on the Wi ng . The stones are formed by being knocked together till they become round . The Reindeer and Musk Ox were newcomers from the north in Mousterian times , and were hunted by prehistoric man for his food ; but we do not ﬁnd anything that would lead us to suppose that he had as yet domesticated animals .

There is one very black markagai nst the M ouste rians , and that is evidence, which is supposed to

s e point to cannibali m , contained in d posits in the

Rock Shelter of Krapina , in Croatia . Here were

e found human bon s which had been broken , as if to extract the marrow , and burnt by ﬁre . It appears that the Australian aborigines , while not being habitual cannibals , yet practised this dread ful art, as a ceremonial way of disposing of the dead bodies of their relatives .

It will be seen from the foregoing that , though we know a little more about the M ousterians than about Chellean and Acheulean man , it does not amount to very much . We must search for some primitive people living under similar conditions , and at about the same stage of civilization as the 102

T he Cave- Dwellers

M ousterians ul , and see if we can draw usef com parisons . The aborigines of Australia are such a people . Of them Messrs . Spencer and Gillen have written that they " have no idea of perma im nent abodes , no clothing , no knowledge of any

lemen s o t p t save those fashioned u of wood , bone , and stone , no idea whatever of the cultivation of crops , or of the laying in of a supply of food to tide

no over hard times , word for any number beyond l three , and no be ief in anything like a supreme ” being . They have not been treated quite so

l al brutally as the Tasmanians were , and are sti l

suﬁ erance lowed to exist on , and end their days as

nf l . a race on the u erti e lands In the beginning , it seems as if they followed the Tasmanians into

nl Australia from the mai and , and settled there , driving some of the latter people into Tasmania and mixing with them to some extent . The scientists divide mankind into three groups

C motrichi the y , with wavy hair like ourselves , and the Australians , come into this group ; the Lis

trichi so , whose hair is perfectly straight , like that E of the skimo ; the Ulotrichi , whose hair is very twisted , as in the case of the Negroes , Bushmen , and Tasmanians . Their spear shows a consider 105 Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age

able development on that of the Tasmanians , and resembles the Mousterian type . About ten feet long, some have hardwood points on to which barbs

33 . were spliced ; others a ﬂint point , as Fig . The

- Australians use a spear thrower . This has many forms , but the essential feature is a stick about a yard long, with a handle at one end , and a peg at

5 - the other . Figs . 34 and 3 Show the spear thrower in use . First the end of the spear is ﬁtted on to the peg of the thrower . This is held in the right hand well behind the body , the left hand balancing the spear . It is then thrown up and forward , the thrower imparting an additional impul se as the spear leaves the hand . Darwin when in Australia

" : saw thenatives at practice . He wrote A cap be ing ﬁxed at thirty yards distance , they transﬁxed it

- with a spear , delivered by the throwing stick with the rapidity Of an arrow from the bow O f a practised

This short range means that the Australian must

if to be an expert hunter and tracker , he is approach

O f within striking distance his quarry , the kanga

- roo . Mousterian spear throwers have not been E discovered in urope as yet , but we can safely 6 . 7 w assume that the shorter type , as Fig , hich is a 106

T h e Cave - Dwellers

- harpoon thrower, was not arrived at without many

simpler forms going before . The Australian uses

a wooden shield , which is a development on the

Tasmanian equipment . Very much narrower than

a those of medi eval times , it is a long oval in shape ,

2 2 6 s varying from feet to feet inche in length , by

6 12 . to inches in width Rounded on the outside , the inside of the shield is hollowed out so as to leave

a vertical handle . When one thinks that this is h all cut out of the solid wit a ﬂint , it becomes a

notable piece of work . The shield points to l quarre s and ﬁghting , because its only purpose can

be to protect the user against spear thrusts . We do not know if the Mousterian used shields

Before we forget it , let us say that our readers should pay a V isit to the Ethnographical Gallery at

- the British Museum , and see there a spear head madeby theAustralians , inrecenttimes , from broken bottle glass ; it is an astonishing production , and the man who made it a great craftsman . A visit should be paid to the British Room where there are Mousterian types , and so comparisons can be drawn . The Australians make very useful knives out of

- long dagger shaped ﬂakes of stone , and by daubing 109 Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age

resin at one end form rounded handles . They mount sharp ﬂakes in the ends of sticks with resin , and these are used as chisels and adzes . There are stone picks inserted like the spear - heads in cleft sticks , only at right angles ; these were secured with tendons and resin . Stone axes are made , and these are hafted in a withy handle , made supple by heat , and then bent around the axe , and fastened with tendons and resin . This suggests that the ﬂaked stone found by Mr . Falkner at Churt, near Farn ham , Surrey (Fig . may have been mounted in much the same way. The Australian implements should be seen at the

British Museum . Some of their work is ground E and polished , and here in urope we associate this

erl od . with the next p , the Neolithic Their methods of hafting are ofgreatinterest , andprehistoric people must also have used some such way to protect

- their hands from the razor like edges of the ﬂints .

Like the Tasmanians , the Australians walk abroad without any clothes , but wear skin cloaks in their c huts ; they stit h these together with sinew , and use bone awls and pins for piercing the skins .

Necklaces and forehead bands of shells and teeth

e f are worn , and they make thems lves beauti ul by 110

T h e Cave - Dwellers

- pushing a short stick , called a nose pin , through

the thin membrane which divides the nostrils .

‘ They also sacriﬁce joints of their little ﬁngers , as

we shall ﬁnd the Aurignacians did in Europe .

Their huts are very simple , and serve for the camp

O f a day or so , which makes a break in their wan

erin s . . 37 d g Fig shows such a type , which may have been used by Mousterian man in the summer

when he left his cave . It represents the next de v el opment that we should expect from the Tas

’ - m nian s . a break wind (Fig It is , in fact ,

l - ike two break winds leaning together , and was

made of any rough branches that came to hand . The Australians have another method of light ing ﬁres by friction : one stick is held in the

un hands and rotated in a hole in another , til the

wood dust is ignited (Fig . Darwin gives an

" improvement on this method : the Gaucho in the Pampas taking an elastic stick about

eighteen inches long, presses one end on his breast , and the other pointed end into a hole in a piece of

wood , then rapidly turns the curved part like a

’ ” - carpenter s centre bit . Another interesting development is the bark 3 . 9 . canoe of the Australians , as Fig The lines of 113 Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age this are much the same as that of the Tasmanians

(Fig . but the construction is that of a real boat , not a raft . A long strip of bark is stripped from the gum tree with a stone axe and warmed over a ﬁre to make it supple . Curved saplings , bent as ribs , give the shape , and a stretcher goes across the tops of these, and the boat is prevented from spreading by grass rope ties from side to side .

The prow and stern are tied up with stringy bark .

A small fire is carried on a clay floor . The Austra lians are great fishermen and have invented a

h - ﬁ s . barbed harpoon , and hooks of shell and wood E The point of the comparison is that in urope,

- after Mousterian times , we come across well made harpoons , which could only have been used for

ul ﬁshing . These co d not have developed without long experiment . Mousterian man may have gone

ﬁshing with a spear without barbs , and from his poor catches may have thought out the more effec tive harpoon . Therefore , they must have used some form of canoe , which , of course, has long since disappeared , so we turn to another primitive people for inspiration . The Australians make another form of canoe where bark is sewn on to the framework . The coracle of Wales and Ireland , 114

Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age

ﬁsh . Their cooking is very much like that of the

i Tasmanians , the an mals , being ﬁrst gutted , are

All . cooked in a pit . tendons are removed for use Another notable development is that the women

of and collect the seeds various grasses plants , and grind these down between stones and winnow by

tchi th e pouring from one pi into another, so that husks are blown away . They make rough cakes it i Of the resulting ﬂour . The p ch is a shallow

wooden trough used for shovel or scoop as well . The M ousterians may have collected seeds in the

same way , and so have started the long chain which

- led up to the household loaf of to day. The

- Australian women use a yam or digging stick , like

the one illustrated (Fig . but not loaded with a

- stone to increase weight . The yam stick is not

used to cultivate the soil , but for digging up honey,

ants or lizards which are eaten . Remember , we have seen that Darwin found people living excl u l siv e y on meat , and that this was general before the advent of agriculture ; but this collecting O f seeds would naturally have suggested the idea of

growing plants for food .

ann The Australians did not practise c ibalism ,

as is s except in a ceremonial way, when , the ca e in 1 16 T h e Cave - Dwellers

e e Victoria, they regarded it as a r v rent method of disposing of dead relatives . We have seen that the Tasmanians made rush baskets , and grass rope for climbing trees and tying up their rafts . With the rope they would have learned the principle of twisting together

e e short lengths of ﬁbr , so that thes made a con

h e e tinuous string . This is t principl of all spin ning . The wool with which the stockings of our readers are darned is in reality a number of short hairs kept in shape by the twist of the spindle

O f the spinning machine . Fray out an inch of wool and see . The Arunta tribes in Central Australia can manufacture twine of fur or human

use dl hair . For this they a spin e as A (shown in

Fig . this is a stick about fourteen inches long which at th e spinning end is pushed through holes

ve in two thin cur d sticks , about six inches long , placed at right angles to one another . Some fur or hair is pulled out , and part of it twisted with the ﬁnger into a thread long enough to be tied on to the end of the spindle ; this is rotated by being rubbed up or down the thigh . The remainder of the fur held in the hand is allowed to be drawn out as the spindle twists the thread ; this is then wound up 1 17 Everyday Life in th e Old Stone Age on out to the spindle , and more of the fur paid , and

. nk more thread twisted This , we thi , is the great h est achievement of the Australians , and t ey , as we have seen , are to all intents and purposes living

A e . in a Stone g The problem is , for how long they have used th e spindl e ; did they bring it with them in remote ages from the mainl and ; did prehistoric man , whom the Australians so closely resemble, " use a spindle They must have needed rope, and if they made it in this way, then the sixteenth

- - century spinning wheel , and the eighteenth cen

- tury spinning jenny , would have their roots very

mech ani deep in the past, because both are only cally driven spindles which trace their descent

40 . from something like Fig . The Australian does not use his twine for weaving , but contents himself 28 with making net bags . Fig . shows a still more primitive method of making twine out of long shreds of bark . The Australians have a very complicated system of relationship . A group will be divided into two

- classes or phratries : one half may be Crows , the other Lizards . A Crow would marry a Lizard , not another Crow ; would be kind to all the other

a feath Crows , and regard the birds of th t name as 1 18

Everyday Life in th e Old Stone Age

not with natural causes , but with magic wrought

by an enemy . This leads to trouble, because if

the medicine man of the tribe names the enemy ,

and the enemy is a neighbour , he is tracked down

and put to death . In this way , the unfortun ate

native helps to bring about his own extinction . This fear of magic has always been strong in the

minds of primitive people .

Games of all sorts are played by the children ,

who practise throwing spears , and also an amusing

" ” e - e little impl ment called the weet w et , because

it has the form of a kangaroo rat . Then a day

re comes when the boys are grown up , and a ini

tiated and become men . Dances are performed by the men before th e novitiates to typify essential

re qualities . The dog and kangaroo a shown for

endurance and speed . The boy has one of his hi m front teeth knocked out to teach to bear pain .

ul - e The b l roarer , a long ﬂat leaf shap d piece of wood scored across , is whirled round on a thong , and the whistling noise it makes is thought to be

’ the voice of a god . It is the boy s introduction to the spiritual life of th e tribe ; to a knowledge of the

e e th e H v Myst ri s , and of igh God who li es in the

Sky . 120 T h e Cave- Dwellers When an Australian is born it is assumed that he brings with him a churi nga; these are long ﬂat pieces of wood or stone with rounded ends , marked with various totem devices , and considered sacred O b l s . n ject These are deposited in caves , and o y

m nl s brought out for cere o e . The Australians have various methods of dis

of posing their dead , but burial is the most general .

With the bodies are interred weapons , food , and a

- th e - drinking cup for use in happy hunting grounds , so that in one more detail they resemble the Mous terian man of La Chapelle aux Saints , with whose remains a ﬂint boucher was found .

c We need not continue these omparisons , but we hope that those we hav e given may help to build up a picture of what the surroundings of Mous terian man may have been like . At the end of the second chapter we gave a sketch of Chellean man , and tried to show that his most urgent need was food ; that unless he hunted , he starved , and could not depend , as we do , on a ’ cﬂort shop round the corner, and the of other men . This was the material side of his life ; but what of the spiritual " We shall be quite wrong if we think of primitive man as being only concerned 121 Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age

with food , because man has always demanded some other interest . l We have the very early be ief in a life hereafter,

- in the happy hunting grounds , where conditions were kindlier , and there was more opportunity to expand . The Chapelle aux Saints burial, with

ﬂint implements to hand , for use in the spirit " world , points to this . How did this come about

Primitive man , or woman , curled round asleep by

V his ﬁre , dreamed dreams and saw isions ; his spirit seemed to separate from his body , and he joined old friends who were dead , and with them followed

ul in the chase, or did the wonderf things we all do in our dreams . When he awakened and rubbed sleepyeyes to find his own fireside , he told hisfriends of u his advent res ; that so and so was not dead , but a spirit in a wonderful world . We can see the beginnings of ancestor worship . An acute fit of indigestion , coming after too much mammoth , would have provided the nightmare , and its equivalent horrors , and an underworld of bad

spirits . The man of imagination woul d have polished u p the tale , and ﬁlled in the gaps , and g aining much renown thereby, he became the medicine man 122

Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age

i lik the stone wall of advancing civ lization , and e the Tasmanian and Bushman , the Red Indian and l c Austra ian of nowadays , he fades out of the pi ture ,

l e and hi s place is taken by a c everer p ople .

124 CH APTER IV

ART IS T S O F T H E O LD S T ONE AG E

AURI GNACIAN M AN

WIT H Mousterian man th e Lower Palaeolithic

th e period of Old Stone Age came to an end , and the next phase we shall consider will be the Upper

Palaeolithic . At the base of this we ﬁnd the

men Aurignacian or Loess , and of these there are 41 at least three types . Fig . shows the CrO fﬁ Magnon , and is a su cient explanation why the poor O ld Neanderthaler or Mousterian went to the wall .

The CrO- Magnon man gains his name because his remains were found in a rock shelter O f that name in the valley of the Vezere ; the same river which has the cave O f Le Moustier on its banks (p . Th e bodies had evidently been buried with rever

im le ence and were probably clothed . Flint p ments for use in the spirit world were found with

rO- the skeletons . The C Magnon people were a 125 Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age

ce e e ﬁne ra , with an av rage h ight of six feet . The

ul ce h ah I sk ls are dolichocephalic, p c ndex well shaped with a capacity of 1590 to 1715

- cubic centimetres , quite up to the average to day .

e The faces were broad and the chin well d veloped .

’ Man s jaw was the last thing to be civilized . Our 41 drawing (Fig . ) has been made from the plaster

at a casts the British Museum , and shows type

which can be recognized as modern man (H omo

sapi ens) . 42 The second type (Fig . ) was discovered in 1909

e at Combe Capell , on the Couze , a tributary of the

e Dordogne The body , when buried , had b en pro

v ided with ﬂint implements , and perforated shells were found which had probably been used to deco

rate the clothing . The skull is very long and

narrow , and the skeleton that of a man of short

CrO- stature , in contrast to the Magnon , who was

tall . An Aurignacian skeleton has been found in this

Pav iland In . country at , South Wales At the same time there appears to have been a

E Au third type , the Grimaldi , in urope during

e e rignaci an times (Fig . Skel tons hav been

e e E f e found at the Grott d s n ants at Menton , which 126

Artists of the Old Stone Age

S f th e CrO- how marked di ferences to Magnon man .

ul The sk ls are dolichocephalic , but the mouth

projected in a prognathous manner , with the chin

retreating under . The nose was ﬂat and of negroid character ; the people not more than 5 feet to 5 feet l 6 . . a inches in height Prof Sol s , in his book

Anci e t H unters e n , reviews the vidence which points to these people as the ancestors of the Bush

In av men of South Africa ; they may , fact , h e ﬁrst

come from Africa , and then have been forced back

- ri by the cleverer CrO Magnons . The Au gnacians

were cave - dwellers but lived as well in the open ; their camps have been found in the newer Loess and for this reason they have been called the

e . Lo ss Men If , as has been thought , the Bush

Auri nacians men may be the descendants of the g , we may perhaps assume that the Loess men had

h e t same sort of huts . These the Bushmen con

e - structed , much as the gipsy do s to day with a

- frame work of bent sticks covered with skins (Fig .

" Darwin wrote of the toldos of the In

a dians ne r Bahia Blanca , South America , these are round like ovens , and covered with hides ; by the mouth of each a tapering chuzo (spear) was ” stuck in the ground . 129 Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age The Aurignacian people improved on the Mous terian ﬂint implements ; we ﬁnd several sorts of

scrapers , knives , and gravers ; the latter a tool for en r m g av g of which they made very clever use . Thereare scrapers flaked ingeni ously into very useful 45 spokeshaves , and Fig . shows a man shaving down the shaft for a lance . The Aurignacian man , judged by the variety of tools which he pos sessed , must have been a clever workman making all sorts of things ; remember all his woodwork has disappeared , and we only find now the imperish able flint , and some bone implements . With his

i burin , or graving tool he easily cut p eces out of reindeer horns , and made arrow and spear heads .

e This use of bone marks another st p forward , and from now on we shall ﬁnd many examples of this

s new material . Bone bodkin were used to pierce skins and pass sinews through , then the bodkin had a blunt barb formed at one end to pull the thong

- l ed through like a Crochet needle , and so up to the bone needles of Upper Solutrean times later on

sh aH . (Fig . Later on we ﬁnd barbed harpoons — The Aurignacian used the bow and arrow we know this because shaft - straighteners have been found , bored to take shafts of different thicknesses . 130

Artists of the Old Stone Age

46 . These were used as shown in Fig . The shaft ,

ul after having been shaved clean , wo d have been passed over a wood ﬁre to make it supple , and then

th e - slipped through hole of the shaft straightener , which is cut obliquely . It can be seen that pres sure applied on the handle would bend the shaft in any desired direction . The natives of the Punjab in India still straighten bamboos in this way, only their shaft - straightener is a substantial post set strongly in the ground . Through this there are

e bored hol s , and the warmed bamboo is put through these , and curves removed by bending the stem in

e E an opposit direction . The skimo , on the other

the . hand , follows Aurignacian way The early bow , like the early gun , was probably not very

f e e fectiv , and the spear must have remained the great weapon . Darwin , writing of the Indians

" : nl from the south of Chile , said The o y weapon

Indl an 1 of an s a very long bamboo or chuzo , orna mented with ostrich feathers , and pointed by a ” - sharp spear head . The boring of holes in the

- shaft straightener , and the use of the bow , sug gests that the Aurignacians used the bow- drill both E to bore holes and make ﬁre , as the skimos do

(Fig . 133 Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age

The Au rignacians hunted as the M ousterians

done had for their food , and people had not yet i learned how to domesticate an mals , or grow food ’ s ﬂ tu s . The reindeer were very plentiful so much is this the case that the French archaeologists talk of the Upper Palaeolithic as the Age of the Rein deer . The climate was improving, and as the

l i Fourth Glacia per od receded , game became more plentiful . The horse was eaten in those days , and in France huge mounds of the bones have been dis é covered , left as the d bris of many Aurignacian E 18 31 feasts . ven so late as , Darwin wrote of

’ South American troops : M arc s ﬂesh is the only food which the soldiers have when on an expedition Here is an account of how the horses may have

’ P ata oni a: been caught , taken from Falconer s g The Indians drive troops of wild horses into a

’ ’ Corral encompassed by high cliﬂs between thirty

e and forty f et high , excepting at one spot where

e the entrance lies . This is guard d to keep them ” secure .

r In ou part of the country , at Ivinghoe Beacon ,

a is a curious cleft in the hills , which tr dition says was a wolf trap in olden days , and its form cer 134

Artists of the Old Stone Age

tainlylends to it the appearance of a corral . There appears to have been plenty of food in Aurignacian 48 times . Fig . has been drawn from the skeleton of the Irish Deer (Cervus giganteus) in the Natural

History Museum . This splendid animal was found in Europe during Pleistocene times . There is another fact which goes to show that the conditions of life were becoming easier . Man and perhaps woman began to draw , and to do so ex

remel . t y well This is a most interesting fact, and

ul one which sho d be noted , that the tribe was con tent to let these people spend their time in this way . One can imagine that the Mousterian or Neander thaler , very much occupied with the struggle for existence at the end of the Fourth Glacial period ,

ul al wo d have de t sternly with the budding artist ,

" ” who desired to cut his share of the chores , be cause he wanted to draw ; but in Aurignacian times d he was allowed to do so , and rawing and sculpture extended into the Magdalenian period . These drawings and paintings are something altogether beyond the art of ordinary savage people . The

Australians , for instance , decorate their wooden

shields with red , white , and black , wavy lines , and

lozenges , which have a pleasantly decorative effect ; 137 Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age but of the polychrome ﬁgures which marked the é culmination of Magdalenian art, the Abb Breuil has written : Et qui place les vieux peintres des ages

glyptiques bien au - dessus des animaliers de toutes ’ ” t r les civilizations de l orient classique e de la G éce . SO here 18 another problem ; it is quite certain that endless experiment must have been made before the artists could have arrived at such marvel

lous dexterity . How did these wonderful people jump out of the void of time " These drawings l were ﬁrst discovered by a Spanish nob eman ,

Santuol a Marcellino de , who lived at Santander,

Spain . He was interested in archaeology and was

digging one day in the cave of Altamira , near his

home . With him was his little daughter , who , f tired o watching the digging , wandered round the " cave , and alarmed her father by calling out Toros Toros '” Bulls in a cave would be somewhat l l . ant o a a arming , and M S u , hurrying to the rescue, found the small girl gazmg at the roof of the cavern .

s Here he discovered drawings and painting of bulls ,

o bison , deer , horses , and many other animals , s me life size . The discovery threw the archaeological — world into commotion most discoveries do ; people could not believe that these really wonderful 138

Artists of the Old Stone Age drawings coul d have been produced at such an

’ early stage in th e world s history . Just as the Neanderthaler was not at ﬁr st believed to be a , E man , and the oliths are not yet generally recog nize d as the work of man , so the Altamira draw

ings were received with scepticism . That stage has been passed through now, many books have

been written , innumerable papers read before

learned societies , and other drawings discovered

e in c rtain French caves , which have convinced the archmologists that in the Altamira cave are auth en

’ tic works O f th e earliest period of the world s art ; and weowe the discoveryto one small girl who called

" ” Toros " in alarm to her father . The O ld painters seem to have started with draw

. 49 l ings in outline like Fig , and then ater in Magda

ni n le a times they passed on to colour (as Fig .

and some of these have an engraved outline . If

our readers are interested , they should try and see é a book by the Abb Breuil , a distinguished French

man who has made a special study of this work . We must pass on to a consideration of what pur

. r pose the drawings served At Altamira, they a e

in a dark cave , which has a total length O f 280 3 metres ; and a metre is about feet inches .

141‘ Everyday Life in th e Old Stone Age

There is no light in the cave , and the ﬁgures occur over all the walls . They cannot be seen now with

a out light , and a lamp must have been used when they were painted ; so we have another discovery , that man had artiﬁcial illumination in Aurignacian times . A dark cave , though , does not make a good picture gallery for display, and it does not seem n as if the Cave were the Natio al Galley of the day . Many suggestions have been made as to the uses of the paintings ; one is that as most of the animals c drawn are those whi h were hunted for food , the paintings formed a magic which placed the animals

O f under the power the medicine man of the tribe . Many O f the animals are drawn with arrows sticking in their bodies ; on some the heart is shown in red . This was a practice which lingered on till recent — times to make a model of your enemy and stick

ul it full of pins ; that is , if you were a spitef person and wished him harm . The Aurignacians were accomplished scul ptors and modelled quite good little ﬁgures in the round about four to ﬁve inches high , and as well in low relief . A curious detail is that the faces are not rendered ; in their drawings and paintings , they

n th e seldom if ever prese ted human ﬁgure , except 142

Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age

’ fan vaul ting of Henry the Seventh s Chapel at

. um Westminster The stalagmites like rising col ns , and all the glittering points woul d have thrown back the light of his lamp . The cave originated the idea of building which we shall see later as Picts ’ th houses , and at ﬁrst must have been used as e tribal temples . In the painted caves of France and

Spain are found the imprints of hands . A hand has evidently been smeared with colour , and then printed on to the surface of the rock or the hand placed there first, and then colour dusted over it , leaving a white silhouette when the hand was re moved . Many of the hands show traces of mutila " O fl tion ; that is , the end of a finger has been cut at the joint . This dismal practice was widely spread and lasted until recent times . It was a form of sacrifice . It existed among the Australians , the

Bushmen of South Africa , and some of the Red In dians , for example, and was practised for a variety f im o causes , generally as a sign of grief, and to plore the better favour O f the gods in future . It

Au seems reasonable , then , to suppose that the

n i n l rig ac a people ost the ﬁngers , which must have

SO l . been usefu to them , in some such way

The Aurignacian women , and perhaps the men 144 ’ l s Fan ated Wo f g, from Iv mgh oe n Beaco .

l utrean Flints . 1 . S F IG . 5 o

— C n lade Man. IG . ha e F . 53 c

Everyday Life in th e Old Stone Age member their wonderful drawings ; to such people much is possible . Dancing has always been an accomplishment of savage people . Darwin wrote

corrober of a y, or dancing party, of the A aborigines in ustralia , held at night by the light

r of ﬁres , the women and children squatting ound Em . u hi as spectators An dance, in w ch each man extended his arm m a bent manner, like the neck of that bird . In another dance , one man imitated the movements of a kangaroo grazing in the Woods whilst a second crawled up and pre ” tended to spear him . In thi s way they

e i dramatized their ev ryday l fe .

SOLUT REAN M AN

The next division of the Upper Palaeolithic is the one which the archaeologists have named the

- Solutrean , after Solutre, near Macon (Saone et

Loire) in France . Solutrean man appears to have lived in England because evidences of his industry

Pav il and have been found at Cave in South Wales , and Cresswell Crags , Derbyshire ; as well as in E France , Central urope , and the North of Spain ,

l re n but not in Italy . The So ut a s may have been 148 —M i ne Needl es . 2 . a n F IG . 5 k g of Bo

Everyday Life in th e Old Stone Age

that a shoemaker sews the sole of a shoe now , by

e boring a hol with a bone awl , and then passing a

. Auri n cians thread through Of course , the g a had

s n not any thread , but must have u ed ﬁne si ews in thi s way . The next step was to hook the end of

ul r the awl so that the smew co d be pulled th ough ,

as using the awl ﬁrst to pierce the hole , and then a

- l crochet needle to pul the thread through . The ﬁnal step was to combine the two Operations into one dl by the use of the nee e , which pierced the hole ,

e l and carri d the thread through itse f (see A , B , and ' i C , Fig . To real ze the joy of a Solutrean woman who ﬁrst used a needle, let us imagine our

- selves sewing to day like a shoemaker , punching holes one at a time . 52 Fig . shows a Solutrean needl emaker at work ;

ﬁrst she cut a splinter of bone out of reindeer horn , as at 1 . Thi s was done by cutting a groove on e ach side with a ﬂint graving tool , as at 2. The

e c as splint r was then shaved down with a s raper , 3, 4 and polished with a piece of stone, as , and the i 5 . eye bored with a ﬂ nt borer , as You can see at the British Museum , the actual needles and the hi implements with w ch they were made , and it is

worth a visit to see these . A sewing machine is 152 Artists of th e Old Stone Age a mechanicall y operated needle At th e British Museum you can see the start of the whole long business which led up to the sewing machine . Magdalenian women later on used hollow bones as

- needle cases . Though the Fourth Glacial period was now long pas t and the weather was gradually becoming more i temperate , it did not mprove in a regular way .

Th e e weather was colder than in Aurignacian tim s , and the mammoth and reindeer were still found in

Europe .

MAGDALE NIAN M AN

a We can now p ss on to the Magdalenian men ,

l r n who succeeded the So ut ea s . The typical station

th e of the industry is on Vezere , not far from the

e Castle of La Madelein , hence the name . The l Solutrean excel ed in flint flaking , and the tool and the implement he made of it were both in this ma terial . The Magdalenian used flint for his scrapers , borers , and gravers and finished them roughly . For the implements he made , he pre ferred bone and ivory . This detail at first may

a not seem of much import nce , in reality it is as vital as if to - day we gave up steel and concrete and 153 Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age

started using some new material . Flint was to

c e have a wonderful renaissance in Neolithi tim s ,

later on , before it slowly gave way to bronze . In many ways the M agdal enians appear to have been

the descendants of the Aurignacians . Magdalenian man appears to have been widely

E . A distributed over urope At ltamira , in Spain , he added th e masterpieces of painting to the earlier

drawm s Auri nacians . H e e g of the g liv d in France , E Germany, and Belgium , and in ngland his handiwork has been found at Kent ’s Hole in

Devon , and Cresswell Crags in Derbyshire . We

i are so anchored nowadays , with our houses to l ve

e fﬁ in , and farms to rais foodstuffs , that it is di cult to realize this widespread distribution of prehis

h e toric man , but in reality needed far larger areas o f land on which to hunt and ﬁnd food . Prof . Sollas has an extremely interesting chapter in his

Anci ent H unters book , in which he sums up the

evidence of what Magdalenian man was like . So

far as can be judged there were two types , the tall

ro- E C Magnons , and a shorter race like the skimos

- of to day . A skeleton of the former was found

a t Lau erie- again in the Vezere g Basse, Dordogne,

e e in Franc , which had b en buried in a contracted 154

Artists of th e Old Stone Age

position with knees drawn up . Cowrie shells were

and e found with the bones , it is thought must hav b een sewn on to the clothing of the body, which was probably fully clothed when buried . 18 8 8 In , another skeleton was found on the banks of the Beauronne, near Perigueux, Chancelade . It

Cro- was of a shorter man than the Magnon, in

an m y ways like the Combe Capelle type , the

l i E - skull arge and l ke those of the skimos to day , li with a ridge along the top . The head do ch oce 53 ph alic and extraordinarily high . Fig . gives some idea of the appearance of the Chancelade man . It has been suggested that he was the E ancestor of the skimo , and was gradually pushed out of the fertile regions by the new race of men who came in Neolithic times , later on

The climate was improving , and the Ice Age receding as a distant memory . The reindeer and mammoth were going north , and the Chancelade men , as hunters perhaps , followed their tracks , and so left the way open for the herdsmen and farmers l who were to fol ow . Magdalenian man made his spear and arrow heads in ivory and reindeer horn ; these were spliced on to wooden shafts and consisted of long 157 Everyday L1fe l n the Old Stone Age

- 1 . lance like points (as , Fig From these de

lo ed v e p harpoons , ﬁrst with one row of barbs , and

2 3 . ul then with two , as and This was a most usef

e discovery , that the barb would hold a ﬁsh aft r it had been speared ; one can imagin e th e disgust of

" the early ﬁsherman who lost his catch off the plain lance ; his joy when he held it on the barbed

’ ﬁ sh erman s harpoon . The ﬁrst good tale must have started with some such exploit . Spearing

- ﬁsh sounds a little unreal to day , but there is an

’ interesting account in Sir Walter Scott s Red

au ntlet g , of sport carried on in this way on horse back . They chased the ﬁsh at full gallop , and ” struck them with their barbed spears . The scene is laid in the estuary of the Solway at low

" e water , when the wat rs had receded from the large and level space of sand , through which a

e e stream , now feebl and fordabl , found its way to ” the ocean . Magdalenian man must have had

’ many a good day s sport like this . Out of the

ﬁ sh - barb of the harpoon , the hook must have de

l o v e ed . e p All this was possible in bon , though an

e impossibility in ﬂint . Bone lends its lf to decora tion , and so the Magdalenian incised simple designs

n - o his lance heads . Smaller bone points have been 158

Artists of the Old Stone Age

- found which suggest arrow heads , but no bows .

These being wooden would have decayed . This inﬂuence of material on design is very Important ; it is a very false and bad art which wastes ma terial or tortures it into a shape which is unsuitable ,

M a dal enians so these early g were proper designers , in that they used their material m a right way . The harpoons show them to have been ﬁshermen and there are Magdalenian drawings of seal and salmon engraved on stone . One expects that the rivers then would have been like those in Western

- Canada to day , where the salmon come up from the sea in tremendous quantities .

4 . 54 Nos . 3A and (Fig ) show another interesting development of the harpoon . Magdalenian speci mens have been found with a movable head , and this suggests that they were used in the same way

h e E 5 as the harpoons of t skimos . No . is our sug gestion of how the ﬁ sh - hook developed out of the barb of the harpoon . As there are many other points of resemblance between the Eskimo and the Mag

alenians see d , we will if any useful comparisons can be drawn .

E e The skimos are very widely distributed , as th y must be , because they live by hunting . They de 16 1 Everyday Life in th e Old Stone Age

e pend on the s al , whale , and walrus for food and

clothing, and these they hunt all along the Arctic nl coasts from Gree and to Alaska . They are a

very gifted pleasant people, who have not any idea

of war, because their main concern is a struggle

for existence amidst ice and snow . They do not

work iron , though in later days they have made use of any pieces which they coul d get hold of from

E i nd traders . The sk mo works in bone a wood in

l s ee . a really wonderfu way, as we shall He also appears to have inh erited the skill of the Mag

dalenian in drawing . Dr . Nansen writes of an

" Y e a Eskimo from Cape ork , who took a p ncil ,

thing he had never seen before , and sketched the coastline along Smith ’s Sound from his birthplace ” northwards with astonishing accuracy .

We will start with their methods of hunting .

- Seals are speared at blow holes in the ice, but far more interesting are the methods by which they

e are harpooned in the open summ r seas . The

Eskimo then uses his kayak ; this is a boat as Fig .

55 , which varies somewhat in the various districts , but in all is constructed on the same principle . On the west coast of Greenland it is about seventeen

l e . feet ong , and made of driftwood on a fram as Fig 162

Everyday Life in th e Old Stone Age also marks his po sition when h e comes to the surface . 2 E No . shows the skimo harpoon . Thi s had in old days an ivory head , tipped with ﬂint, ﬁtted on to a bone shaft . This latter is protected from snapping , by being attached to the wooden shaft with thongs in a sort of ball and socket joint . The

th e lin e is attached to ivory head , and then passes over a stud on the harpoon shaft ; the loose line is carried on a holder on the kayak in front of the i i Esk mo , and the end is attached to a large sealsk n

" ﬂoat which rests at hi s back . The harpoon is thr own wi th a thrower in the same way that the 4 Australian hurls hi s spears (Figs . 3 and The

o s an d head of the harpo n buries it elf in the seal , is so attached to the line that it turns at right angles in the wound . It is at once wrenched off the bone

a shaft, and the position of the se l is noted by the

ﬂoat whi ch is thrown overboard . The wooden shaft ﬂoats and is picked up . As there are many very beautiful ivory or bone

- ni harpoon throwers of Magdale an times , it seems fair to assume that the seal was hunted then as it

- is by the Eskimos to day .

- hi 3 . 57 No . , Fig , shows the bird dart w ch is 164 Artists of the Old Stone Age

thrown with a thrower . The forward projecting barbs kill the bird if the actual point misses . All these weapons are carried by the Eskimos on the

e deck of the kayak , neatly ﬁtted und r thongs and ivory studs .

’ E e The skimo s clothing is of s alskin , and his coat is arranged to ﬁt closely around the circul ar rim of the hole in the deck in which he sits . He m can be tu bled right over by a rough sea , and yet right himself with a turn of the paddle .

The Magdalenian had bone needles , and his clothing may have been like this . At the British Museum there is a sledge made of

if e dr twood , with bon platings on the runners , all tied up with thongs . It shoul d be seen to realize how primitive man manages without nails and screws . As well there are kayaks and a model of

’ the umiak or women s boat . Fig . 58 shows an E skimo game played rather like cup and ball . A very much simpliﬁed Polar bear is carved in ivory and pierced with many holes ; the bear has to be caught through one of the holes on the end of the stick . The boring of holes brings up the question of

- whether Magdalenian man used the bow drill . 165 Everyday Life in th e Old Stone Age

Small ivory rods have been found , perforated at

one end , with a slit at the other shaped into a

mouth . This is thought to have been the bow . The bowstring was tied through the hole at one

l v en end , g a twist round the drill , and the bow then l being bent , a oop in the bowstring was slipped into the notched end of the bow , and kept the

ut . 4 latter bent . Our c (Fig 7) shows how the drill could then be rotated . Such drills are used by E the skimos , and many other primitive people

- to day , both to bore holes and produce ﬁre by friction . Drawings have been discovered whicharethought to represent tents or huts , and suggest that the M agdal enians had improved on those of the Au

ri nacians . 44 . g , as shown in Fig This round bee hive form , made perhaps of willow withies , would if have been weak in the crown , the tent was of any size, yet it could be constructed very simply any

ne f where that saplings were found . O o the Mag

i n . 5 dal en a drawings suggests a type , as Fig 9 . Almost all the early but builders seem to have dug a hole in the ground of circular shape . The earth removed was heaped up round the outside . In the centre of the hole a roof tree was set up , formed 166

Artists of th e Old Stone Age

of the trunk of a tree , with a fork perhaps left at

the top . Around this saplings were placed , their

feet stuck into the surrounding mound , with the

tops leaning against the roof tree . These formed

the rafters , and if in between these were interlaced

smaller boughs , it is quite easy to see that the whole

could be covered with skins or rough grass thatch . Quite a comfortable little house could be made in this way , and we know that it is a type which was general in Neolithic times .

as Other Magdalenian drawings suggest a type , 60 b . ut Fig , and this is a form of which is con structed by the North American Indians . The M agdal enians had their winter quarters in caves and rock shelters and the period is named after the cave of La Madeleine on the banks of the Vezere . Did Magdalenian man , as he slowly travelled to the north , take with him a memory of the rock shelters of France , and hand down a build ing tradition to the Eskimos of to - day " They have very interesting rock houses , and others which are constructed in a skilful way with blocks of snow . Stone lamps have been discovered , which suggest that the Magdalenian not only lighted E but warmed his houses , as the skimo does to 169 Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age

day , by burning fat in a stone lamp with a moss wick . 6 Fig . 1 shows the skin tent which the Eskimo

re uses on his summer wanderings . The plan sembles that of the houses ; there is the semicircular

- bed place at A , and a central gangway at B , with cooking pots at the sides at C . The diagram shows how the tent is made with poles and covered with skins , the front portion being of membrane to admit light . Large stones serve to hold down the skins . We have included these drawings because we want to get as many representative types as we

- We can of primitive dwelling places . shall ﬁnd it useful later on .

E e The Magdalenian , like the skimo , may hav

for used his lamp cooking , but here is an interesting description by Darwin of a Tahitian who prepared

" a meal in another way : H aving made a small ﬁre of of sticks , placed a score of stones , about the size

f . o cricket balls , on the burning wood In about ten minutes , the sticks were consumed , and the stones hot . They had previously folded up in

f s of small parcels o leaves , piece beef, ﬁsh , ripe and unripe bananas , and the tops of the wild arum . These green parcels were laid in a layer between 170

Artists of the Old Stone Age

two layers of the hot stones , and the whole then

s covered up with earth , so that no smoke or team could escape . In about a quarter of an hour , the ” whole was most deliciously cooked . This was a method used in Neolithic times later on . The M agdalenians may have used the reindeer for food in the winter , by drying the ﬂesh over a wood ﬁre ,

and then pounding it up , and preserving it by pour

ing over hot fat , rather like the pemmican of the

Indian and Eskimo . We cannot be sure whether the M agdalenians

had started cultivating the soil . Perforated stones have been found which may have been used to

- l d . 62. oa the digging stick , as Fig This is the a method the Bushmen adopt , and D rwin men

tioned - the use of the digging stick in Chile , to dig

up roots , though this does not mean cultivating

them . The Magdalenian period marked the highest de

v el o ment f p o the art of prehistoric man . The paintings are of astonishing merit ; without being

’ stickl ers for great detail , these old painters caught

the very spirit of the animals they pal nted . The mammoth swings along alive from the tip of his

trunk to the end of his tufted tail . The bison and 173 Everyday Life in th e Old Stone Age boar charge ; the reindeer and red deer move in a slow, easy canter . The drawings are proof of the immensely developed power of detailed observa tion which came to the hunter as part of his craft, ’ and which is diﬂerent to the sympathy shown in later days , when animals were domesticated . Fig . 63 shows a Magdalenian painting of a boar , and the 1 frontispiece, Fig . a bison , from the Altamira Cave .

The artists of those days used reds and browns , blacks and yellows , and were adepts at producing

- high lights , half tones , and shadow . They appear

to have started with a black outline, and then to have ﬁtted in the body of the work, adding tone , l f or wiping away co our to get the e fect of lights . f i The ﬁgures are often of li e s ze, and their vigour makes us wish that we could draw animals in such

a living way .

M . Daleau has found in France , red oxide of iron ,

which formed the basis of one of the colours , the

pestles with which it was ground , and the shoulder

blades of animals that served as palettes . Brushes e f were used , and would not have b en di ﬁcult to d make . The paints were carrie in little tubes made of reindeer horn ; trul y there is nothing new under the sun , and we shall ﬁnd some day, per 174

Artists of th e Old Stone Age

’ haps , a catalogue of a Magdalenian artists colour man . We have said that these old painters caught

the very spirit of the animals they drew, and to do

this they realized that it was necessary to compose,

- or design , their shapes and outlines . To day we

i re can snapshot a horse wh le galloping , and the

sul ting photograph will not convey the sense of action that the Palaeolithic artist has obtained in

63 . nn Fig . This is because the human eye ca ot record movement with the rapidity of the lens of a

in camera . The artist realizes this , and presents

a stead convention , or design , which we ﬁnd more

real than the reality of the photograph .

The Magdalenian engravings on ivory , some

on - times the handles of their shaft straighteners ,

h e were just as wonderful as t paintings . There is

one in the British Museum from La Madeleine , of mm l a ma oth which is sp endid in its vigour . Figs .

64 65 are ﬁ ne e i and xamples of engrav ng on bone . 6 . 6 v th e Fig , of an i ory dagger at British Museum ,

shows that Magdalenian man coul d carve in the

e . 6 round , as well as cut an incis d line Fig . 7 shows

- a harpoon thrower , the use of which was described . Remember that all the engraving and carving was

done with ﬂint implements . 177 1 1 6 Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age The drawings and engravings convince us that the artists knew the animals , and that their work was actual life - drawing ; in this way we can ﬁnd that among the Magdalenian animals were mam

e moth , reindeer , and the great Irish d er, the bison and horse , the musk ox, glutton , and Arctic hare . These show that the climate was for some part of the Magdalenian period colder than in Aurignacian times . The illustrations we have given are suﬂi cient to prove that the M agdalenians were a very highl y c c gifted race . These people were be oming ivilized ,

ul e and they were artists , and so wo d have b en pleasant and friendly . We cannot say how they

" said How do you do to one another ; perhaps like the New Z ealanders they rubbed noses . Darwin when he went there wrote : They then squatted themselves down and held up their faces ; my com

e panion standing over them , one after anoth r , placed the bridge of his nose at right angles to

. theirs , and commenced pressing This lasted rather longer than a cordial shake of the hand with us ; and as we vary the force of the grasp of the hand m shaking so they do in pressing . During the process they uttered comfortable little grunts . 178

Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age painter ; we shoul d like to deﬁne that individual as any man , or woman , who puts more into a job of work than they expect to take out of it ; th e business man is one who wants to take out a little more than he puts in . We should like to point out that an engineer may

- be a very good artist . A ﬁne motor car is a work of Art ; it has Beauty of form , and is designed with

th ati Truth , or it would not do its job , so t possesses

; e l two of the great qualities ther remains , on y

Goodness . It therefore follows that no man can do ﬁne work unless he has some appreciation of the underlying principles on which humanity has

built itself up . At the very worst he can only be

one third bad , so credit must be given to the artists

of all kinds . We like to think that good work has been one of

the prime factors in the civilization of man , and we believe that dull mechanical work destroys the

brain . If this is so , what of the poor factory hand

- e " of to day, chained to the machin as its slave It

see is not possible for him to dream dreams , or

visions ; the utmost limit of his , or her, endeavour ,

to is , perhaps , watch an automatic machine making

e nuts , each an xact counterpart of its fellow . 18 0 Artists of th e Old Stone Age

We wonder , when our turn comes to be dug up 0 500 A . D . if and have our skulls measured, say in ,

the archaeologists of that far - away to - morrow will

say, Here was a people who threw away their herit

age , and arrested their development , because they lost the use of their hands . But so far as our friends the M agdalenians are

concerned , judged by their work they had made E great advances , and , like the skimos whom they so

closelyresembled , must have been a pleasant people .

18 1 CH APTER V

T H E E ND O F T H E OLD S T ONE AG E

zilians M a le T H E A , who followed after the gda

ni ns . a . were the last people of the Old Stone Age

After this we come to Neolithic times , or the New

Azili ns A . a l Stone ge The , like all these earlypeop es , were widely distributed , and traces of their handi work have been found as far apart as the cave of

’ d Azil Mas , Ariege, near Lourdes in the south of E France , and Sevenoaks and Hastings in ngland , and Oban in Scotland . The Scottish discoveries of harpoons are very interesting . It shows that the ice was retreating , and man making his way into the tracts of the newly uncovered land . We know what some of the Azilians were like because they had a curious habit of removing the heads from th e bodies of their dead and burying

. Ofnet the skulls like eggs in nests At the Cave,

6rdlin en near N g , Bavaria , South Germany,

twenty- seven were found together buried in red

Azilians t ochre . This would suggest that the used o 18 2

T h e End of the Old Stone Age

paint their bodies in their lifetime , and so the colour was buried with them for use in the spirit world . One skull of a small child had many shells placed — - near it perhaps as play things . Round another

’ was l all a chap et of deer s teeth , and were placed in the same way, looking westward . The actual bodies were probably consumed by ﬁre ; later on cremation was a usual method , the ashes being buried in an urn . Here is a new fact ; most of the old races we have been writing about were long- headed (dolicho cephalic) ; we now ﬁnd side by side with this type ,

- brachycephalic , or a rounder headed people . The fact that individuals of the two races were buried in the same grave points to their having lived to

l ni ns gether happily . So that if some M agda e a moved north after the mammoth and the reindeer , others remained behind . 6 Our drawing (Fig . 8 ) has been made from the

- ne 9 rounder headed O f t skull . Fig . 6 is of the longer - headed type We do not ﬁnd any beautiful paintings in this period . Man was beginning to look on animals from a different point of view. In the old days

’ he had the hunter s eye, quick to note beauty of 18 5 Everyday Life in th e Old Stone Age

body and grace of movement , which he expressed in drawings ; in Azilian days he may have begun to hi look on mself as a herdsman , though so far onl y the dog was domesticated . The climate was milder , with westerly winds and warm rains ; the

. G waters were rising reat Britain was an island ,

s and great forest spread over the land , except where n the Loess lay thick , and by ﬁ eness prevented

o . the trees fr m taking root Man , who had been

free to roam over the tundra , was now hemmed in ,

- e e a so the old care fre lif p ssed away , and he began to have possessions .

ul we These had to be usef , and do not ﬁnd any cunning work in ivory . The awl takes th e place

n e v im of the needle . Fli t is r vi ed for making pl e ments , but in a rougher way than those of Solu

I trean times . Stag horn is used for harpoons nstead

Azili ans e . of r indeer , so the also were ﬁshermen

The most interesting things which they have left behind them are the painted stones found at Mas

’ ﬂattish d Azil . These are in shape, about two

. 70 . inches across , and painted with signs , as Fig Some of them are surprisingly like early forms of — letters red and black were used . The use to which these stones were put is unknown , but they 18 6

Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age

The Glacial Period had receded into the pas t,

th e was and climate temperate . Whereas in Magdalenian times the countryside had the ap pearance of the Arctic tundra where the Eski l in i mos now ive, Azilian t mes it became well wooded .

ed Before we leave the paint stones , we must draw attention to the fact that some of the mark

ings are very much like Roman letters . From this some archaeologists have argued that the stones were the text- books from which Azilian boys learned their A B C . This is a tremendous ﬂight of imagination , and a short cut indeed at the same h time . We feel that the Roman letter ad to wait for thous ands of years yet before it arrived at th e

character we know now . Turn the subject over in nk your mind , and thi how prehistoric man con v eyed information or asked for it . Our early

- r friend , the Java sub man , had rudimentary powe s of speech ; he progressed as a baby does now . Our ” own very youngest brother learns to say bread , because his small brain teaches him that thi s is

what the grown - ups call the stuffwhich is so pleasant

. All rs to eat ; speech comes ﬁrst , then letters lette

n re seem to have started as pictures . We k ow p 18 8 T h e End of the Old Stone Age historic man could draw splendidly ; if he met a man who did not understand his own language , he woul d naturally draw the thing he desired to ob a tain . We remember once buying a goose in W les , l l hi from an old lady who spoke on y We sh , w ch we did not understand . We pointed to the goose, and by signs conveyed the idea that we wished to buy it . We then in the same way invited her to take as much money from our hand as she desired ; but we wished her to kill , draw , and deliver the bird in time for dinner the next day, at a farm some miles away . So to the great delight of the old lady we drew pictures of the doom and journeyings of

o ff th e goose , and in due course we dined it ; but this woul d be a very laborious method for all the actions of everyday life . The drawings then were standardized and simpliﬁed and in time became letters , and our old A B C , like everything else, has behind it a history stretching out across the horizons into the very beginnings of time it ll ’ self . Our readers wi know Kipling s delightful

" H ow the Al habet was made tale of p , in Just So

Stories . The probable Azilian deposits at Oban were

- found in a cave opening on to a sea beach . Prof . 18 9 Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age

Sollas mentions the fact that in a beach at Glasgow , which corresponds in age with the one at Oban , no less than eighteen dug- out canoes have been dis covered, These may have belonged to Azilian man . On the rocky ﬂoor of the cave at Oban were successive deposits : ﬁrst a pebbly gravel washed

in by high tides , then a bed of shells , then gravel , and on top of this another shell - bed with a ﬁnal topping of black earth , formed in later ages . The level of the land has gone up , perhaps as it lost its tremendous load of ice , or that of the sea gone down , because the cave is now some thirty feet

- above the sea level .

l - In the shel beds are shells of oysters , limpets ,

n whelks , the claws of lobsters , the bo es of large sea ﬁsh , red deer , goat , pig , and many other

Ash es remain animals . where the cooking hearths were . From all these remains we can be quite sure that Azilian man was both ﬁsherman and

e hunter, and the bon s of the large sea ﬁsh mean that he took his harpoon to sea , in some form of

n . canoe , or boat , covered with ski s Man about this time seems to have been drawn more and more to the water . In Norway and v Sweden , Azilian remains ha e been found which 190

Everyday Life in th e Old Stone Age is a proof of great intelligence on the part of pre hi storic man , because the dog would have been

i ll as i as useful an ally as ﬁre and ﬂ nt , as we be ng l an excellent companion . It is a most impossible for us to imagine a world to - day with onl y wild dogs and wolves in it . We wantedto sum up the general impressions to be

e h e e gath red from t lif of prehistoric man , and the i dog gives us the opportun ty of doing so , by show ing the diﬂerence that he made to man when they

e became fri nds . We have seen that the most urgent need of pre historic man was food ; that as he had not domesti cated any of the animals , except the dog , and did not grow any corn , he had to hunt to live , and was a wanderer because he foll owed the game . When th e dog came as a friend , he brought an even i keener sense of smell than that of preh storic man , and so coul d follow the trail ; at the same time he would have simpliﬁed the tas k of stalking the animals . It was necessary to get within the

i e e lim ted range of a sp ar thrown by hand , b fore

man ul i prehistoric co d k ll his supper , and the dog woul d have helped by driving the game towards the hunter . 192 T h e End of the Old Stone Age

With a more acute sense of hearing, the dog would have given prehistoric man the feeling of

security which he so badly needed . The man would have been afraid of so many things ; the

nasty little noises of the night would have alarmed him so much more than the howling of wolves which he knew ; there was the constant dread of magic and evil spirits . Prehistoric man then , crouching

- fire encir l at the side of his camp , looked out into c ing gloom and saw the fi relight reflected in the eyes of wild animals with more assurance when he had the dog beside him for a friend ; if the supper had to be shared , the dangers seemed to be halved . If we go back and think of the other things we have written about , we must bear in mind that the ancient hunters were helped in their wanderings ’ by a diflerentlyshaped Europe to the one we know today . The isthmuses at Sicily , Gibraltar, and d Dover , not only led to wi e wanderings on the part

a of Pal eolithic man , but opened the way for inter esting migration of animals . The Southern types could come North , and the Northern go South if need be .

Great climatic changes , like the Ice Ages , played t ’ heir part in man s development , by adding the 193 Everyday Life in th e Old Stone Age

l stern necessity of altering his mode of ife , if he wished to survive . We look back on a Europe of

those days , as on a broad but dimly lighted stage .

E . anti uus i Across it pass the huge q , the h ppo , and

- sabre toothed tiger , later come the mammoth and

ae s reindeer , with hy na , lions , and bears ; and man moves among them and seems to have changed leas t of any .

. M an and his P as t Mr Crawford , in his book ,

’ has taken an idea from Samuel Butler s Infe and

H abit e , and appli d it to prehistoric man ; it amounts to this , that man by the use of tools has added

- . H e limbs to himself rides a bicycle to day and ,

e e by the use of g ars , progress s as rapidly as if he had as many legs as a centipede . A ﬂint implement was as useful to prehistoric man as another hand . ll No animal uses tools ; they wi use beak , claw , ’

diﬂerent . and tail as tools , which is a matter Man then , in times of great changes , was not called upon to alter his own body , to suit the altered cir

n s . i cumsta ce The an mal does this , or rather in many generations , and at the cost of countless lives , it is done , or, as in the case of the great reptiles , the type becomes extinct . The weather

a l becoming colder , the anim l will gradual y de 194

Everyday Life in th e Old Stone Age

’ base of a mammoth s tusk sawn off as a bracelet , led the way for all the other people who wanted to make themselves beautiful . Bone needles made ﬁne sewing and embroidery possible ; all this is

ae part and parcel of arch ology , and there still remains plenty to do . Archaeology IS like the design of a Roman pave

or a . ment , built up of many small fragments , tesser e

The main design is beginning to be known , but many of the details are missing . It is for this reason that research work goes on ; that camps dug over , and ancient cities uncovered . Many

’ months work may resul t in just one small piece of

. ae t new knowledge The arch ologist is deligh ed , and tells all his friends , and the little new tessera is ﬁtted into its place in the larger pattern ; but

al ﬁrst it is tested in all ways , to see that it re ly

a nd ﬁts , because these people are learned , jealous that before any addition is made it shall be real

knowledge . If this book has given any of our readers any idea of even the outline of the pattern of this know

ledge , we shall be very happy , because they

n then start serious work o their own account . can then pass on to how Neolithic man carrie 196 T h e End of the Old Stone Age

f l his everyday li e , which wi l be the subject of our next book . And now , in the friendliest way pos sible, we should like to take leave of our readers for a little time .

" 40

The Dance b P . y . C Q.

19 7

Index

Ele as s ph tenoi s, 57 En av n 141 177 gr i g, , E th s 41 44 14 1 av a sub- man 38 - 47 77 8 2 oli , , , J , , , E u n es e ess on 12 q i ox , pr c i , Er er n 31 9 g o , , 9 Es mos 157 16 1 164 165 ki , . , , K

F a a 1 15 162 164 165 K y k , , , , ’ ent s e 57 154 K Hol , , F e mak n 53 6 1 1 13 n ves 109 ir i g, , , K i , F sh n 1 14 158 a na 102 i i g, , Kr pi , F nt 50—54 100 li , ,

F d . 58 8 1 8 9 1 16 134 142 oo , , . , , , 190 F ssil s 5 6 Lacust ne 29 o , , ri , F e e h n 17 Lam s 142 169 170 r r , Jo , p , , , - - Fue ans 38 . 6 7 69 Lan e ie Basse 154 18 7 gi , g r , , Le na do d a Vin i 3 o r c , G Levall is ﬂa es 10 1 o k , Lissotrichi 105 G a e l 62 , ll y Hil , L ss 29 30 3 1 99 oe , , , , G all e ill man 62 y H ,

Games , 120 , 16 5 G au h s 58 1 0 1 1 13 c o , , , M G a a Peri d l st 21 l ci l o , , :

3d , 21 ; 4th , 21 Man Ch an e ade 157 Gl a e s 13—18 24 , c l , ci r , , C mb e Ca ell e 126 G imal d man 126 o p , r i , O ré - M a n n 125 129 154 G nd n 1 16 g o , , , ri i g, G a e l 6 2 ll y il , des En ants 126 H Grotte f , G mal d 126 ri i, La Ch a e l e aux Saints 95 9 6 H p l , , M a dal en an 153 18 g i , , 1 aft n 1 10 Neande th al 9 6 H i g, r , and- axe 54 62 70 O fnet 18 2 18 5 H , , , , , a ns 1 14 16 1 16 3 164 P td wn 43- 50 H rpoo , , , , , il o , — a n- th we s 164 Pith ecanth m us 37 4 1 43 H rpoo ro r . p —, , ast n s 18 2 S l ut ean 1 48 153 H i g , o r , i o tamus 57 M ade eine La 95 153 169 H pp po , l , , , , se 57 134 M a dal enian aint n 174 Hor , , g p i g, uts 68 1 13 129 166 16 9 M a ic 1 20 123 H , , , . , g , , Ma mm th 7 3 153 o , . I M ’ as d Azil , 18 2, 18 6 M esat e h al i s u l 48 ic p c k l , Ice A es 8 auses 8 M essa e st cks 1 15 g , ; c of, g i , Im l ements ﬂint 22 23 25- 27 Mico ue La 95 p — , — , , , , q , , 3 1 41 43 50 54 62 70 90 100 M aine rd e 17 34 , , — , , , , , or gi l , , 1 10 130 15 1 152 M aines 14 17 , , or , , Initiat n 120 M uste an im ements 3 1 io , o ri pl , Inte ac al Pe d l st 21 2d 21 M uste ian man 92 95 - 1 16 123 rgl i rio , , ; , o r , , , 26 3 d 21 M ust e Le 92 95 ; , o i r, , , Isth mus 28 43 6 6 76 8 2 193 M usk 1 02 , , , , , , ox, Iv n h e Bea n 134 147 M uti ati n 14 i g o co , , l o , 4 200 Index

Scu t s 142 lp or , Secti n ac ss En and 7 o ro gl , Neande th al 96 Seven a s 18 2 r , o k , Neande th al man 96 Sh a t- st ai hten n 130 r , f r g i g, Nec l a e 77 1 10 147 Shie ds 109 k c , , ,— l , Need es 153 165 Sm th ll am 4 5 33 l , . i , Wi i , , , S ut e 148 ol r , O S utrea ﬂ nts 15 1 ol n i , S t man 148 —153 olu rean , Oban 18 2 18 9 S mme 22 23 70 , , o , , , — O fnet ave 18 2 S ea 54 67 77 8 1 8 3 10 1 161 c , p r, , , , , , O fnet man 18 2 S ea - thr w n 106 , p r o i g, S kesh av e 130 po , Sten 4 o , — St at ﬁ d ks 6 7 r i e roc , Pa nts 174 St e 5 i , r py, Pav il and Cav e 126 147 Stre an m ements 24 25 26 54 , , , py i pl , , , , P ks 1 10 Str n man 26 54 ic , epya , , P td wn 44 il o , Pi td wn man 43- 50 T l o , P tfa 57 67 i ll , , — P u ia de s t 3 1 T asman ans 68 7 5 76 8 1 8 5 1 17 l v l po i , i , , , , , P st- G ac a Pe d 21 T ents 166 16 9 o l i l rio , , , T h ames ive 27 28 , r r, , R T i er s a e- t th ed 34 57 g , br oo , , T temi sm 1 19 143 o , , Rafts 8 2 8 3 1 17 19 1 T a kwa s 29 , , , , r c y , Reindee 102 134 153 Tri al customs 8 6 8 9 1 19 r, , , b , , , Rh n ce s 57 73 74 T rin 38 i o ro , , , il , Rive d f e d 13 22 r ri t p rio , , Rive te aces 18 22 r rr , , Rive s 27 28 r , , Roches moutonné es 14 17 t ichi 105 , , Ulo r , R e mak n and s inn n 8 4 mia 1 15 165 op i g p i g , , U k , , 1 17

R st -ca nate ﬂ nt m ement o ro ri ( i i pl ) , W 4 3 We ve 27 y, ri r, ’ l s an 147 Wo f f g,

Sah a a 29 r , Sch tte ﬁ elds 17 o r , S a e 70 130 15 2 Yam- stic 116 cr p r, , , k ,

B C of Ev olution

Joseph Mccabe

b ook th at tells th e meaning of

E u ion and th t r vol t , e ac ual sto y of

th e ev olution of hin s in r t g , ve y

sim r ple and att active language.

Packed with scientiﬁ c kn led e ow g , but quite free from diﬁ cult

scientiﬁ c terms . T ells you ab out

e r h in fr m ve yt g, o Einstein to th e

Br r fr ontosau , om th e stars to th e

la s of so i l de el m nt e a w c a v op e , y t

ch ild mayread it with pleasure.

’ G . P. Putnam s Sons

New York London