Anthropology

At first inspection Palæolithic relics seem scarcely distinguishable. They are all of flint, chert, or similar stone; are all chipped and therefore more or less rough, and consist of forms meant for cutting, scraping, and piercing. But a closer examination reveals differences in their shapes and fundamental differences in the method of their manufacture. The technique employed in the fashioning of artifacts is more significant than their appearance, and it is by directing attention to the process that one can classify these “fossils of civilization” with accuracy.

Chellean.—In the Chellean period there was made substantially one type of implement, a sort of rude pick, almond or wedge shaped. It is often somewhat pointed, although rarely very sharp. The butt end may be rounded, some of the original surface of the cobble or nodule of flint being left for convenience of the hand in grasping the implement (Fig. 18, a). This tool is known as the “Chellean pick.” The Germans often call it faust-keil or “fist wedge” and the French have coined the expressive epithet coup-de-poing or “blow of the fist.” The Chellean pick averages from four to six inches in length, somewhat less in breadth, and weighs perhaps from a quarter to a full pound. It would have made an effective rude weapon. When firmly grasped and well directed, it could easily crush a skull. It might serve to split wood, hack limbs from trees, butcher large game, and perhaps roughly dress hides. It would not do any one of these things with neatness and accuracy, but neatness and accuracy were qualities to which early Palæolithic men paid little attention. This universal Chellean tool may be described as a combined knife, saw, ax, scraper, and pick, performing the various functions of these implements with notable crudities but efficiently enough when wielded with muscular strength.

The Chellean pick was made by striking a round or oval nodule of flint with another stone and knocking off pieces. Most of the detached flakes were large, as shown by the surfaces from which they came off; perhaps most of the chips averaged a square inch. Anything like fine work or evenness of outline was therefore out of question. One can imagine that many tools were spoiled, or broken in two, by the knocks to which they were subjected in their manufacture. The flakes struck off fell to the ground and were discarded. If the workman was sufficiently skilful, and luck stayed with him, he would before long be holding the sort of implement that has been described. Not more than a few dozen strokes of the hammer stone would be required to produce it.

Some attempt has been made to distinguish variant forms of Chellean tools, such as scrapers, planers, and knives. But some of these identifications of particular types are uncertain, and at best, the differences between the types are slight. It may be said with approximate accuracy that the long Chellean period possessed only the one tool; that this is the first definitely shaped tool known to have been made by human hands; and that it is therefore the concrete evidence of the first stage of that long development which we call civilization.[11]

Acheulean.—The Acheulean period brings to light a growing specialization of forms and some new types. Rude scrapers, knives, borers, can be distinguished. The flakes struck off are finer than in the Chellean and the general workmanship averages higher; but through the whole of the Acheulean there is no new process. The Chellean methods of manufacture are improved without an invention being added to them.

Mousterian.—In the Mousterian period a retrogression would at first sight seem to have occurred. Tools become smaller, less regular in outline, and are worked on one side only. The whole Mousterian period scarcely presents a single new type of implement of such all-around serviceability as the Chellean pick. Nevertheless the degeneration is only in the appearance of the implements. Actually they are made by a new process, which is more advanced than that followed in the Chellean and Acheulean. In these earlier periods flakes were struck off until the kernel of stone that remained was of the shape desired for the tool. The Mousterian technique is distinguished by using the flake instead of the core. This is the cause of Mousterian tools being generally smaller and lighter.

Secondly, when the flake dulled by use, its edge was renewed by fine chipping. The pieces detached in this secondary chipping are so small that it would have been difficult to knock them off and maintain any regularity of edge, for to detach a chip by a blow means violent contact. If the blow is a bit feeble, the chip that comes off is too small. If the artifact is struck too hard, too large a chip flies off and the implement is ruined. Fine chips are better worked off by pressure than by impact. A point is laid upon the surface near the edge. When this point is pressed down at the proper angle and with proper firmness, a scale flies off. With some practice the scales can be detached almost equal in size. The point may be of softer material than the stone. It is in the nature of flint, and of all stones that approach glass in their structure, that they break easily under pressure in definite planes or surfaces. Modern tribes that still work flint generally employ as a pressing tool a piece of bone or horn which comes to a somewhat rounded point. This is usually attached to the end of a stick, to enable a better grip of the working tool, the butt end being clamped under the elbow. A tool of the same sort may have been employed in the Palæolithic. The process of detaching the scales or secondary flakes by pressure is known as “retouching.” Retouching allows finer control than strokes delivered with a stone. The result is that Mousterian implements, when at their best, possess truer edges, and also greater variety of forms adapted to particular uses, than those of preceding ages (Fig. 18, b).

In spite of their insignificant appearance, Mousterian tools accordingly show advance in two points. First, the flake is used. Secondly, two processes instead of one are followed; the knocking off of the flake followed by its retouching.

Aurignacian.—With the Mousterian the Lower Palæolithic has ended. In several activities of life, such as art and religion, the Upper Palæolithic represents a great advance over the Lower Palæolithic. Yet it seems that the mental energies of the Aurignacian people must have been pretty well absorbed by their new occupations and inventions, for their tools are largely the same retouched flakes as those the Mousterian had already employed. The Aurignacian carried on the stone technique of the Mousterian much as the Acheulean previously had carried on that of the Chellean.

Solutrean.—The Solutrean seems to have been a relatively brief period, and to have remained localized, for implements dating from it are the scarcest of any from the six divisions of the Old Stone Age. There was a distinct advance of interest in stone work during the Solutrean. The process of retouching, without being fundamentally altered, was evidently much better controlled than before. The best Solutrean workers were retouching both sides of their tools instead of one side only, as in the past, and working over not only the edge or point but the entire surface of their artifacts. One of the characteristic implements of their time was a laurel-leaf-shaped blade which has often been considered a spear point, but would also have been an effective knife and may often have been used as such. This has the surface of both sides, from tip to butt, finished in even retouching, and is equaled in excellence of workmanship only by the best of the spear points chipped by modern savages (Fig. 18, c).

Of course this was not the only stone implement which the Solutrean people knew. They made points with a single shoulder at the butt, as if for mounting, and had crude forms which represented the types of earlier periods. This partial conservatism is in accord with the general observation already stated, that lower types tend to persist even after higher ones have been invented; and that because a period is determined by its best products it by no means follows that simpler ones are lacking.

Magdalenian.—The sixth period of the Old Stone Age, the Magdalenian, resembles the Mousterian in seeming at first glance to show a retrograde development. The retouching process was carried out with less skill, perhaps because the Magdalenians were devoting themselves with more interest to bone than to stone. Magdalenian retouched implements are less completely worked out and less beautifully regular than those of Solutrean times. One reason for this decline was that another technique was coming to prevail. This technique had begun to come into use earlier, but its typical development was Magdalenian. It was a process which, on account of its simplicity, once it was mastered, was tending to make the art of retouching unnecessary. This new method was the trick of detaching, from a suitable block of flint, long straight-edged flakes, by a single blow, somewhat on the principle by which a cake of ice can be split evenly by a well guided stroke of the pick. The typical Magdalenian implement of stone is a thin flake several inches long, triangular or polygonal in cross section; in other words, a long narrow prism (Fig. 18, d).

To detach such a flake, flint of rather even grain is necessary, and the blow that does the work must be delivered on a precise spot, at a precise angle, and within rather narrow limits of force. This means that the hammer or striking tool cannot well come in direct contact with the flint. A short pointed piece, something like a nail or a carpenter’s punch, and probably made in the prehistoric days of horn or bone, is set on a suitable spot near the edge of the block of flint, and is then tapped smartly with the hammer stone. A single stroke slices off the desired flake. The sharp edges left on the block where the flake has flown off can be used to start adjacent flakes, and thus all the way round the block, the workman progressing farther and farther in, until nearly the whole of his core has been split off into strips.

This Magdalenian process, which was in use ten, fifteen, and perhaps twenty thousand years ago, survived, or was reinvented, in modern times. It is only a few years ago that flints were being struck off by English workmen for use on flintlock muskets exported to Africa. The modern Englishman worked with a steel hammer instead of a bone rod and cobblestone, but his technique was the same. Figure 19 shows the complete lot of flakes into which a block has been split, and which were subsequently laid together so as to reform the stone in its original shape. Similar flakes made of obsidian, a volcanic glass similar to flint in its properties, are still being produced in the Indian districts of interior Mexico for use as razors (Fig. 18, e).

The Magdalenian method of flint working gives the smoothest and sharpest edge. It is not adapted for making heavy instruments, but it yields an admirable knife. The process is also expeditious.

Summary.—The successive steps in the art of stone working in the Palæolithic may be summarized thus:

73. Other Materials: Bone and Horn

Stone implements must perhaps always remain in the foreground of our understanding of the Old Stone Age because they were made so much more numerously than other objects, or at any rate have been preserved so much more abundantly, that they will supply us with the bulk of our evidence. At the same time it would be an error to believe that the life of these men of long ago was filled with the making and using of stone tools to the exclusion of everything else. Gradually during the last fifty years, through unremittingly patient explorations and the piecing of one small discovery to another, there has accumulated a fair body of knowledge of other sides of the life of Palæolithic men. There is every reason to believe that as time goes on we shall learn more and more about them, and thus be able to reconstruct a reasonably complete and vivid picture of their behavior.

Implements of bone and horn are next most abundant after those of stone, but it is significant that the Lower Palæolithic still dispensed with these materials. In the Chellean and Acheulean stations, although broken bones of devoured animals occur, bone was not shaped. In the Mousterian this material first came into use, but as yet only as so-called “anvils” on which to chip flint or cut, and not as true tools.

One of the changes that most prominently mark the passage from the Lower to the Upper Palæolithic is the sudden development in the use of bone at the beginning of the Aurignacian, and then of reindeer horn. These materials came more and more into favor as time went on. The Aurignacians had bone awls or pins, polishers, paint tubes of hollowed reindeer leg bone, and points with a grooved base for hafting, generally construed as javelin heads. In the Solutrean, eyed needles were added. The greatest development was attained in the Magdalenian. Bone javelin and spear heads were now made in a variety of forms, with bases pointed, beveled, or grooved. Hammers, chisels or wedges, and perforators were added to the list of bone tools. Whistles and perhaps flutes were blown. Reindeer antler was employed for carved and perforated lengths of horn, “rods of command” or magic, they are usually called; as well as for harpoons and throwers, to be discussed below.

By the close of the Palæolithic, objects of organic substances began to approach in frequency those of flint. This may well have been a sort of preparation for the grinding and polishing of stone which is the distinctive technique of the New Stone Age. Bone cannot well be chipped or retouched. It must be cut, ground, or rubbed into shape. The Neolithic people therefore may be said to have extended to stone a process which their predecessors of the Upper Palæolithic were familiar with but had failed to apply to the harder substance.

74. Dress

The slender bone needle provided with an eye which the Solutrean and Magdalenian added to the primitive awl implies thread and sewing. It may be concluded therefore that, at least from the middle of the Upper Palæolithic on, the people of Europe went clothed in some sort of fitted garments. It would be going too far to assert that the Neandertal men ran about naked as the lower animals. Several inventions which they had made compel us to attribute to them enough intelligence to lead them to cover themselves with skins when they felt cold. But they may have been too improvident, or habituated to discomfort, to trouble even to dress hides. At any rate there is no positive indication that they regularly clothed themselves. By contrast, the sewing of the Upper Palæolithic Cro-Magnons marked a considerable advance.

Ornament may have been earlier than clothing. The paint of the Aurignacians decorated their own bodies and those of their dead. About their necks and waists they hung rows of perforated shells and teeth. More of these have been found on the skeletons of males than of females. By the Magdalenian, there was sophistication enough to lead to the carving of artificial shells and teeth out of ivory; and amber was beginning to be transported from the German coast to Southern France.

75. Harpoons and Weapons

Towards the end of the Upper Palæolithic, in the Magdalenian, the harpoon came into extensive use. The shafts have of course long since decayed, but many of the reindeer antler heads have remained intact. At first these were notched with barbs along one edge only. In the later Magdalenian the barbs were cut on both sides. The harpoon differs from the simple spear or javelin in having its head detachable from the shaft. The two are fitted together by a socket. If the prey, be it fish or mammal, is not killed by the first throw, its struggles to escape shake the shaft loose, while the barbs hold the head firmly imbedded in its body. A line is attached to the head and tied to the shaft or held in the hand of the hunter. The animal is thus kept from escaping. During the Magdalenian the line was kept from slipping off the head by one or two knobs near the butt. In the subsequent Azilian period the head was perforated, as is the modern Eskimo practice. The harpoon is really a rather complicated instrument: it consists of at least three pieces—head, shaft, and line.

Another device which the Magdalenians shared with the Aztecs, the Eskimo, and some other modern peoples, is the spear thrower or atlatl. This is a sort of rod or handle, one end of which is grasped by the fingers while the other engages the butt end of the harpoon or dart. The hand only steers the shaft at the beginning of its flight: the propulsion comes from the thrower. The instrument may therefore be described as a device for artificially lengthening the human arm and thus imparting greater velocity and length of flight to the weapon. There is without doubt considerable ingenuity involved in this apparatus, both in its invention and in its successful use. A person unskilled in bodily movements would never hit upon the invention; nor could a race of high native dexterity acquire proficiency in the art of hunting with the thrower until each individual was willing to practise for a considerable period. It may once more be concluded, accordingly, that by the end of the Palæolithic, civilization had developed to a point where men were much readier to undergo protracted training and forbearance than they had been at the beginning of the period.

One instrument that we are wont to associate with the beginnings of civilization, because of its almost universal employment by savages of to-day, is the bow and arrow. So strong has the preconception been that the Palæolithic peoples must have been like modern savages, that time and time again it has been assumed that they possessed the bow. There is no convincing evidence to show that this was so, and a good deal of negative evidence to establish that they were unacquainted with the weapon. All the Palæolithic remains of flint, bone, or horn, which at times have been interpreted as arrow points, are more conservatively explained as knives or heads of darts. The prevailing opinion is that the bow was not invented until the Neolithic. This would make the weapon only about ten thousand years old—a hoary antiquity, indeed, but recent as compared with the knife, the spear, and even the harpoon. The reason for this lateness in the invention of the bow and arrow is probably to be sought in the delicacy of the instrument. It is not essentially more complex than the harpoon, certainly not more complex than the harpoon impelled by the spear thrower. But it involves much finer adjustments. A poorly made harpoon is of course inferior to a well-made one, but may be measurably effective. It may retrieve game half the time. But a bow which falls below a certain standard will not shoot at all, or will shoot so feebly as to have a zero efficiency. In fact, one of the things that students of the beginnings of culture have long been puzzled about is how the bow and arrow could have been invented. Most other inventions can be traced through a series of steps, each of which, although incomplete, achieved a certain utility of its own. But, other than toys or musical instruments, no implement has yet been found, or even satisfactorily imagined, which was not yet a bow, which would still serve a purpose, and which, by addition or improvement, could give rise to the bow.

76. Wooden Implements

Wood is likely to have been used by primitive men for one purpose or another from the very earliest times. Even “half men” of the “missing link” type, it may be believed, would in case of need pick up a stick or wrench a limb from a tree to serve them as a club. But we do not know when human beings first began to fashion wood into definite implements by working it with their stone tools. Wood is too perishable a substance to have stood any chance of being preserved from so long distant a past.

Our knowledge of the first employment of wood is indirect. Many of the Mousterian chipped flakes are of such size and shape that they could have been operated much more effectively had they been mounted on a handle. Possibly therefore the process of hafting or handling had come to be practised in the Mousterian, although there is no specific evidence to this effect. In the Upper Palæolithic, wood was certainly used to a considerable extent. The harpoon and dart heads, for instance, must have had wooden shafts.

A true ax is not known from the Old Stone Age and seems to have been invented in the Neolithic. The distinctive factor of the instrument, upon which its utility largely depends, is the straightness and smoothness of the edge; and such an edge is best attained by the grinding process. Even the unground axes of the earliest Neolithic depended on a single stroke to provide them with the required straight cutting edge. We may believe, therefore, that the Palæolithic peoples worked wood in the manner familiar to us from the practices of many modern savage races. They split it, rubbed it, and burned it into shape, rather than trying to chop it.

77. Fire

One of the most fundamental of human arts is the use of fire. It is also one of the most ancient. Its occurrence is easily traced, at any rate in deposits that have not been disturbed by nature, through the presence of charred bones, lumps of charcoal, and layers of ash. Charcoal crumbles easily, but its fragments are practically imperishable. Its presence in considerable quantities in any station, particularly if the coal is accumulated in pockets, is therefore sure proof that the people who occupied the site burned fires for warmth, or cooking, or both purposes. The use of fire has been established throughout the part of the Palæolithic when men lived in caves and under rock shelters; that is, during the Mousterian and Upper Palæolithic.

The Chellean and Acheulean deposits are so much older and more open, and in many cases have been washed over so much by rainfall and by streams, that, if the men of these periods did use fire, as they may well have done, its evidences might have been pretty generally obliterated.

Whether early Palæolithic men knew how to make fire, or whether they only found it and kept it alive, is more difficult to say. They could easily have acquired it in the first place from trees struck by lightning or from other occasional natural agencies. Then, recognizing its value, they may well have nursed it along, lighting one hearth from another. Yet at some time in the Palæolithic the art of producing fire at will, by friction between two pieces of wood, is almost certain to have been invented. One may infer this from the general similarity of level of Magdalenian civilization to that of modern savages, all of whom practise the art of ignition. But in the nature of things it would be difficult to find evidence bearing on this point from more than ten thousand years ago. It can be assumed that man is likely to have lived first for a long period in a condition in which he knew and used and preserved fire, yet was not able to produce it.

78. Houses

Although Palæolithic man worked so much in stone, he did not build in it. Hence our knowledge of the kinds of shelters he made for himself is almost nil. There are Upper Palæolithic “tectiform” paintings which look as if they might be attempts to depict houses. It is clear, moreover, that in this period the general development of the mechanical arts was sufficiently advanced to allow of the construction of some sort of rude edifices.

It is conceivable that as far back as the Lower Palæolithic simple shelters of branches were constructed, or that skins may have been hung over a few poles to keep off wind and rain. On account of the perishable nature of the materials involved, it happens that there is no proof either for or against such a supposition. It is possible that in time, when patient excavations shall have revealed some particularly well preserved site, the holes may yet be found in which the posts of a Palæolithic hut were once set. In case of a fire, the carbonized stumps might prove to have been preserved in place; or the butts of the posts might have gradually rotted away and the space once occupied by them have become filled with an earthy material of different color and consistency from the surrounding soil. In this lucky event, even the size and shape of the house might be reconstructed from the relative positions of the post holes. From evidence of just this sort some interesting ideas have actually been obtained as to the houses and village plan of Neolithic European peoples. Of course, the chances are much less that remains of this sort would be preserved from the Palæolithic. But the method would be equally applicable if favorable conditions offered; and it is in some such way that we may hope in the future to learn a little about the earliest habitations that mankind constructed. In any event the example serves to illustrate the indirect and delicate means of which the student of prehistory must consistently avail himself in his reconstructions of the past; and gives reason to believe that all that has been learned about early man in the last fifty years is very little in comparison with what the ensuing generation and century will bring to light.

79. Religion

It has already been said that knowledge of religion, a non-material thing, can be preserved from the remote past only by the most roundabout means. It is conceivable that the people of the Upper Palæolithic spent at least as much time in ceremonial observances as in working flint. Analogy with modern uncivilized tribes would make us think that this is quite likely. But the stone tools have remained lying in the earth, while the religious customs went out of use thousands of years ago and the beliefs were forgotten. Yet this is known: As far back as the Mousterian, thirty thousand years ago, certain practices were being observed by the Neandertal race of western Europe which modern savages observe in obedience to the dictates of their religion. When these people of the Mousterian laid away their dead, they put some of their belongings with them. When existing nations do this, it is invariably in connection with a belief in the continued existence of the soul after death. We may reasonably conclude therefore that even in this long distant period human beings had arrived at a crude recognition of the difference between flesh and spirit; in short, religion had come into being. Even to say that Neandertal man did not know whether his dead were dead, implies his recognition of something different from life in the body, for he recognized of course that the body had become different. Whether the Neandertal race already held to the existence of spirits distinct from man or superior to him, it is impossible to say.

The Upper Palæolithic Cro-Magnon peoples laid out the bodies of their dead and sometimes folded them. They also sometimes painted the bodies, and buried flint implements and food in the graves. That is, funerary practices were becoming established. We may assume that hand in hand with this development of observances there went a growth of ritual and belief.

80. Palæolithic Art

The highest achievement of the men of the Old Stone Age is their art. The perfection to which they carried this art is simply astounding in view of the comparative meagerness of their civilization otherwise. It is also remarkable how full-fledged this achievement sprang into existence. The Lower Palæolithic seems to have been without a trace of art. With the Aurignacian, simple carving and painting appear; and while the acme of accomplishment was not reached until the Magdalenian, the essential foundations of a graphic art of high order were laid in the late Aurignacian.

The Upper Palæolithic people carved in ivory, bone, and horn; they incised or engraved on flattened and rounded surfaces of the same material; and they carved and painted the walls of caves. They modeled at times in clay and perhaps in other soft materials, and may have drawn or painted pictures on skins and on exposed rock surfaces, for all we know; we can judge only by the remains that have actually come down to us. This art is not a child-like, struggling attempt to represent objects in the rough, nor is it a mere decorative playing with geometric figures. These first human artists set boldly to work to depict; and while their technique was simple, it was carried to a remarkably high degree of perfection. A few bold strokes gave the outlines of an animal, but they gave it with such fidelity that the species can often be recognized at a glance. The Cro-Magnon people must have developed a high power of mental concentration to be able to observe and reproduce so closely. The most gifted individuals perhaps practised assiduously to attain their facility.

Palæolithic art is very different from that of most modern savages. The latter often work out decorative patterns of some complexity, richness, and æsthetic value, but when they attempt to depict nature, they usually fail conspicuously. The lines are crude and wavering. Any head, body, and tail with four legs stands for almost any animal. It is a reasonable representation of an abstraction that they accomplish, not the delineation of what is characteristic in the visible form. Both observer and painter, among most living savages, are supposed to know beforehand that the drawing represents a fox and not a bear. At most, some symbols are added, such as a bushy tail for a fox or a fin for a whale. It is only in rare cases that any but advanced nations break away from these primitive tendencies and learn to draw things as they really appear. The ancient Egyptians developed such a faculty, and among savages the Bushmen are remarkably gifted, but, on the whole, successful realistic art is an accomplishment of high civilization. It is therefore something of a mystery how the Cro-Magnon men of the Aurignacian brought themselves to do so well.

In sculpture their first efforts were directed upon figurines. These mostly represent the human female. The head, hands, and feet are either absent or much abbreviated. In the body, those parts having to do with reproduction and fecundity are usually heavily exaggerated, but at the same time given with considerable skill (Fig. 20). It is likely that these statuettes served some religious cult. At any rate, the carvings in three dimensions often represent the human figure, whereas two-dimensional drawings, etchings, and paintings mostly represent animals and are much more successful than the human outlines. In the Magdalenian, miniature sculpture of animals was added to that of the human figure (Fig. 21).

Success in seizing the salient outline was the earliest characteristic of the paintings and drawings. The first Aurignacian engravings are invariably in profile and usually show only the two legs on the immediately visible side. In time the artists also learned to suggest typical positions and movements—the motion of a reindeer lowering its head to browse, the way an angry bull switches his tail or paws the ground, the curl of the end of an elephant’s trunk (Figs. 22, 24). In the Magdalenian, all four legs are usually depicted, and the profile, although remaining most frequent, as it is most characteristic, is no longer the only aspect. There are occasional pictures of animals from before or behind, or of a reindeer with its head turned backward.

There are also some devices which look like the beginnings of attempts at composition. The effect of a row of reindeer is produced by drawing out the first few in some detail, and then suggesting the others by sketching in their horns (Fig. 23). Artists were no longer content, in the Magdalenian, always to do each animal as a solitary, static unit. They were trying, with some measure of success, to represent the animals as they moved in life and perhaps to combine several of them into one coherent picture or to suggest a setting.

By this time they had also acquired considerable ability in handling colors. The Aurignacian and Solutrean artists restricted themselves to monochrome effects. They engraved or painted outlines and sometimes accentuated these by filling them in with pigment. But the best of the later painters in the Magdalenian—those, for instance, who left their frescoes on the walls of the famous cave of Altamira in Spain—used three or four colors at once and blended these into transition tones.

While animals constitute the subjects of probably four-fifths of the specimens of Palæolithic art, and human beings most of the remainder, representations of plants and unrealistic decorative designs are known. The latter seem to have begun to be specially prevalent in the latest Magdalenian, as if in preparation of the conventionalized, non-naturalistic art of the transitional Azilian and Neolithic.

81. Summary of Advance in the Palæolithic

The history of civilization has herewith been outlined from its first dim beginnings to about twelve thousand years ago—say to the neighborhood of 10,000 B.C., as the historian would put it. Progress is immensely slow at the outset, but gradually speeds up. The tabulation in Figure 25 summarizes some of the principal features of this evolution. This diagram does not pretend to be complete; it does try to include some of the most important and representative inventions, arts, and accomplishments of the Old Stone Age.

Thus it appears that the Chellean and Acheulean periods are characterized essentially by a single art, that of chipping implements on a core of flint, plus perhaps the use of fire. The Mousterian evinces progress: stone tools are now made from the flake as well as the core, possibly are sometimes hafted, bone is occasionally utilized, and there are the first indications of budding religion; four or five entries are required to represent these culture traits.

The greatest advance comes from the Mousterian to the Aurignacian; in other words, between the Lower and the Upper Palæolithic. Three times as many accomplishments are listed as in the Mousterian, and whole series of new inventions are now first met with: body ornaments, bone implements, æsthetic products. This sudden leap in the figures goes far to signalize the importance of the division between the Upper and the Lower Palæolithic. In the Solutrean and Magdalenian still further inventions or refinements appear, until, when the Old Stone Age comes to a close,[12] the stock of human civilization may be described as perhaps twenty times as rich as at the beginning. These figures are not to be taken too literally. The tabulation could easily have been compiled on a more elaborate basis. But even then the relative proportion of culture features in each period would remain approximately as here given. And as regards the general fact of accumulation of civilization, and its range and nature, the diagram may be accepted as substantially representative of what happened.

The end of the Palæolithic thus sees man in possession of a number of mechanical arts which enable him to produce a considerable variety of tools in several materials: sees him controlling fire; cooking food; wearing clothes, and living in definite habitations; probably possessing some sort of social grouping, order, and ideas of law and justice; clearly under the influence of some kind of religion; highly advanced in the plastic arts; and presumably already narrating legends and singing songs. In short, many fundamental elements of civilization were established. It is true that the sum total of knowledge and accomplishments was still pitifully small. The most advanced of the Old Stone Age men perhaps knew and could do about one thing for every hundred that we know and can do. A whole array of fundamental inventions—the bow and arrow, pottery, domestication of animals and plants—had not yet been attempted, and they do not appear on the scene until the Neolithic. But in spite of the enormous gaps remaining to be filled in the Neolithic and in the historic period, it does seem fair to say that many of the outlines of what civilization was ultimately to be had been substantially blocked out during the Upper Palæolithic. Most of the framework was there, even though but a small fraction of its content had yet been entered.