Neolithic

“ Men write of and wonder at the strange gap between what are called the Paleolithic and the Neolithic ages, that is, between the ages when the spearheads and ax and arrowheads were of stone chipped roughly into shape, and the age of stone even-edged and smoothly polished. ”

“ The Neolithic is by original definition the age of polished stone as opposed to the fracturing of stone in the Palæolithic. In a sense, this definition is a true one, at any rate for Europe and the Near East. There is no stone grinding in the Palæolithic and there is in the Neolithic. ”

“ Neolithic man shows a marked advance on the capacity of his Palaeolithic predecessors in all the useful arts of life: his tools, his pottery, his weapons; but as an artist he was beyond comparison inferior. His attempts to draw men and beasts resulted in no more than conventional symbols, such as an intelligent child might scribble; of the Palaeolithic man’s taste for design, as shown in the carved work of the caves, or of his power of reproducing nature, there is not a sign. ”

“ The Neolithic implements, and the domestic animals and plants, described in the preceding pages, have been discovered over the whole of Europe with the exception of northern Russia and northern Scandinavia. They imply that the Neolithic civilisation was long established, and that it underwent so little change, if any, in the lapse of ages that no traces of a change have been preserved to our times. ”

“ Then research and imagination rebuild the eternal rings of granite and, erecting upon them tall domes of thatch and skins on wattle ribs, conceive the early village like a cluster of gigantic mushrooms, whose cowls are uplifted in that rugged fastness through the night of time. We see Palaeolithic man sink into mother earth before the superior genius of his Neolithic successor ”

“ These closing essays have impressed on us clearly and distinctly the isolation of the Paleolithic Age. When we reflect on its prolonged duration, its remoteness in time, and its complete severance from the Neolithic and succeeding ages, we are almost ready to wonder whether they were indeed human beings. But beginning with the Neolithic Age, we come to our own era. ”

“ But probably men had reached the Neolithic stage elsewhere some thousands of years earlier. [46] Neolithic men came slowly into Europe from the south or south-east as the reindeer and the open steppes gave way to forest and modern European conditions. ”

“ In short, the main elements of Neolithic civilization, including the disposal of the dead in caverns, or artificially constructed megalithic chambers, were established in various parts of Europe, even before the final close of Palæolithic civilization. ”

“ We know not where or when the dawn of human civilization arose, but it was probably long before the date of our earliest River-Gravels and in some part of the world more favoured by climate than Britain. Why then should we speak of British implements as Eolithic? And how can we apply the term Mesolithic to a period intervening between the Palæolithic and Neolithic Ages, when we know neither when the one ended nor when the other began? ”

“ The great characteristic of Neolithic culture seems to be a rude, often barbarous, sometimes [Pg 243] ugly but generally healthy, always hardy and vigorous growth—it grew “like a weed”—the manifestation of an intense vitality. ”

“ The Paleolithic included objects found in caves and glacial gravels; the Neolithic, on the surface and in tombs. The first period ran from some vague beginning hundreds of thousands of years ago up to the advent of the Neolithic after the glaciers had melted. By definition, paleolithic man made chipped stone implements and no other kind. Neolithic man was supposed to be distinguished by the making of ground, or—as we usually say—polished, stone axes and of other tools shaped by rubbing instead of chipping; agriculture, pottery, and textiles came in as secondary traits. ”

“ In all ways we thus recognise, amid diversities of race, climate, and other external circumstances, many minute analogies between the men of palæolithic and neolithic ages of Europe, and those of the new world’s more recent centuries, in regions apart from its singular centres of a native civilisation. ”

“ The prehistoric times of the New World also exhibit a Neolithic stage, corresponding to that of Europe, as the basis of the further development of the ancient civilised lands of America. And where a higher civilisation did not develop autochthonously in America, European discoverers found the Neolithic civilisation still in active existence, as they did in the whole Australian world. ”

“ These Neolithic people probably “migrated” into Europe, in the same way that the Reindeer Men had migrated before them; that is to say, generation by generation and century by century, as the climate changed, they spread after their accustomed food. They were not “nomads.” Nomadism, like civilization, had still to be developed. At present we are quite unable to estimate how far the Neolithic peoples were new-comers and how far their arts were developed or acquired by the descendants of some of the hunters and fishers of the Later Palæolithic Age. ”

“ The Neolithic, or Epoch of Tamed Animals, is characterized by stone implements, polished or made smooth by a process of grinding and cutting, the greater development attained in the art of pottery, and by the presence of the bones of the domesticated animals. ”

“ Following the Palæolithic era, or rude stone age, is the Neolithic, or new stone, age; and now we find man using polished weapons, making pottery, using fire to warm himself with, and developing social manners. Instead of living in caves, he lived in lake dwellings, with others of his species, and gradually developed agricultural tastes. This metamorphosis, we know from the fossil remains found deposited in various strata, occupied a long period of time, probably thousands of years; and even then we are left thousands of years before the historical era, which followed the bronze and iron ages. ”

“ If we are going to continue using the term Neolithic—as we certainly are—and if we want to limit it in some sensible way that may prove a bit more permanent, let us see what else than polished stone can be used to define it. ”

“ The same may be said of climate, floras and faunas. The inventive skill that leads to mechanical improvements in social industries, and the rise of pastoral and agricultural occupations, are essentially the outcome of long experience under the unprogressive influences inherent in mankind. In fact, the fundamental principles of the two civilizations are so divergent that the Neolithic can hardly be regarded as a local development of that of the Palæolithic period. ”

“ As regards the later periods, those of metal and probably the Neolithic, the west lagged behind the east, the north behind the south; Asia preceded and invented, Europe followed and imitated. As regards the entire duration, a tremendous disproportion is observable. The vast bulk of the total time of culture is covered by the Palæolithic: the three following Ages are all squeezed into a tenth of the whole. Within this fraction again the Neolithic takes up half, leaving the two metal Ages to divide the other half between them. There is a clear tendency toward acceleration of development. ”

“ The stage in European history we are thus called upon to inspect is known by the name Neolithic Age, so-called because a new and improved mechanical principle then came into general use, viz. the art of polishing stone implements by rubbing them with some hard material, so as to give them a sharper cutting edge than was possible by the old process of chipping. How far we have travelled in time to reach this phase of culture we cannot say in so many years, or centuries, or even millenniums. ”

“ And this superiority of the Neolithic over the Palæolithic Epoch becomes far more evident if we take as our standard of comparison, not the poor fisher population, who probably first reached the Danish shores as pioneers, but the Neolithic civilisation that had been fully developed in sunnier lands and followed closely upon these trappers or squatters. ”

“ They were essentially growths in and from the mass of the people, usually owing comparatively little to the genius of any individual inventor or discoverer. We have called them Neolithic, but some or many of them were old far back in Paleolithic time. ”

“ It is hardly necessary to repeat for the Neolithic what has already been said of the Palæolithic periods: the older types, such as chipped flint tools, continued very generally to be made. Such persistence is natural: a survival of a low type among higher ones does not mean much. It is the appearance of new and superior inventions that counts.
The Early Neolithic can be summed up, then, in these five traits: pottery; the bow and arrow; abundant use of bone and horn; the dog; and the hewn ax. ”

“ We may, with many of the authorities, look to this temperate and fertile region for the slight advance made by early Neolithic man beyond his predecessor. As the cold relaxed, and the southern fringe of dreary steppe w as converted once more into genial country, the race would push north. There is evidence that there were still land bridges across the Mediterranean. From Spain and the south of France this early Neolithic race rapidly spread over Europe.
It must not be supposed that the New Stone Age at first goes much beyond the Old in culture. ”

“ It is probable that during the immense stretch of time which in Europe covered the growth of the various successive Palæolithic, and finally Neolithic, cultures—the "old-stone" ages during which man used stone implements which he merely chipped and flaked, and the "new-stone" age in which he ground and polished them—there happened time and again what has happened in the history and prehistory of man in Africa and North America. ”

“ Not only the stone weapons and implements, but, as far as we can see, even the remains of the oldest ceramics, show that uniform development of the culture of the Neolithic Period which proves a like course of mental development in mankind. ”

“ Others pushed on till they reached the west highland lochs and islands, where they obtained abundance of food supplies in the luxuriant marine and land faunas of that district. No polished stone implements, or any worked objects characteristic of the Neolithic civilization, have hitherto been found on any of the sites inhabited by these primitive people. ”

“ But the Neolithic and Bronze layers are superficial, usually of no great thickness; they have been less solidified and protected, and far more exposed to the disturbing work of burrowing mammals and of men digging for buried treasures. These circumstances, combined with far less continuity of occupation, have greatly diminished the chronological value of their study.
Neolithic cave remains occur in somewhat limited areas scattered all over Europe.37 They [Pg 54] have been studied in England, France, Spain, Austria, and Germany in at least fairly large numbers. ”

“ The first epoch is the Paleolithic, or old stone age, when the implements fashioned by man were sharp chipped flints. To this succeeded the Neolithic, or new stone age, characterized by polished stone implements, and the domestication of animals. ”

“ Whatever our conclusions in that matter, this much we may say with certainty; there is no great break, no further sweeping away of one kind of man and replacement by another kind between the appearance of the Neolithic way of living and our own time. There are invasions, conquests, extensive emigrations and intermixtures, but the races as a whole carry on and continue to adapt themselves to the areas into which they began to settle in the opening of the Neolithic Age. The Neolithic men of Europe were white men ancestral to the modern Europeans. ”

“ The palæolithic, neolithic and metal ages are taken up in their natural order. The famous relic sites, notably those of England, France and America, the kitchen-middens, lake-dwellings, crannoges, dolmens, menhirs, cromlechs, traces of peoples long since disappeared in name even if still represented by their descendants, are noticed in considerable detail and with many illustrations. ”

“ To deal with them is the province of archaeology; and the reader who wishes to make himself acquainted with them can do so, after he has mastered the literature of the subject, by visiting the collections in our museums and by himself becoming a collector. Here we desire only to learn so much as may help us to understand how neolithic man lived, and from what origins the culture which succeeded his was evolved.
The Neolithic Age is sometimes, especially on the other side of the Channel, called the period of polished stone:254 but most of our flint implements were neither ground nor polished ”

“ All we can do is to classify man’s habitation of this earth, as well as we can, under certain well-defined, and known conditions. Thus, that called the Stone Age, must be divided into two parts, that of the roughly chipped flint implements—which is designated the Palæolithic period—and that of the polished and carefully finished stone arms and implements, which necessarily show a later time, and a higher state of civilisation—which is called the Neolithic period. ”

“ We must pass on to the men of the Neolithic or later stone age. The Palæolithic age was of very great duration, much longer than all succeeding human history. Between Palæolithic and Neolithic times there is in England a large gap. In France various stages have been traced showing a continual advance in culture. In England little, if anything, has been found belonging to the intermediate stages. Such remains may yet be found in caves, or in lower river gravels, now buried below the alluvium. ”