Paleolithic

“ In Europe there was apparently a long lapse of time between the disappearance of the Paleolithic tribes and the arrival of the Neolithic people, but we have no evidence of such a period in America. The Paleolithic people remained in possession until driven away by the Neolithic ones. All evidence of Paleolithic man in Europe terminated with the Glacial Age, and there is little doubt but what they date from preglacial times. Our present knowledge does not carry us any farther back in this country than the close of Glacial times. ”

“ The neolithic implements, on the other hand, are much better made at the starting-point, and they gradually improve, until they give place to implements of bronze. Again, the paleolithic remains are accompanied with the remains of mammalia, such as the mammoth, etc., which are now wholly or locally extinct, while the mammalian remains found with those of neolithic man are of existing species. Lastly, the paleolithic remains are found in the deposits of sand and gravel we have described as imbedded within the till, while the neolithic remains are found only in the upper drift. ”

“ The contributions to our knowledge of the paleolithic during the decade in question may for convenience be grouped under three heads: (1) Those relating to finds in valley deposits; (2) cavern explorations, and (3) the discoveries of human skeletal remains. As examples of the first group, I have chosen the researches of Commont at Saint-Acheul (France) and of Szombathy, Hoernes, and Obermaier at Willendorf (Austria-Hungary) . ”

“ We have before us, then, a new culture and a new people. On the one hand is Paleolithic man, with his rude stone implements, merely chipped into shape—surrounded by many animals which have since vanished from the theater of life—inhabiting a country which, at its close at least, was more like Greenland of to-day than England or France. The scene completely changes, when the misty curtain of the past again rises and allows us to continue our investigations into primitive times. ”

“ When European savants had established the science of Archæology, and shown the existence of separate stages of culture, it was but natural that those interested in the matter on this side of the Atlantic should turn with renewed energy to investigate the archæology of this country, to see if here, too, they could find evidence of a Paleolithic Age. ”

“ According to this theory, then, the Glacial Age commenced about two hundred and twenty thousand years ago. It continued, with one interruption of mild climate, for one hundred and forty thousand years, and finally passed away eighty thousand years ago.
What shall we say to these results? If true, what a wonderful antiquity is here unfolded for the human race, and what a wonderful lapse of time is included in what is known as the Paleolithic Age! How strikingly does it impress upon our minds the slow development of man! ”

“ As we have now spent some time in tracing out the culture of these early ages, it may be well to see if there are any means at our command to determine the absolute chronology of the various ages. At the very outset of our inquiry, we shall perceive that we have no such class of facts as guided our investigations into the age of the Paleolithic remains. ”

“ And he looks confidently to the future explorer of the earth's fossil records to extend the history back into vastly more remote epochs, for it is little doubted that paleolithic man, the most ancient of our recognized progenitors, is a modern compared to those generations that represented the real childhood of our race. ”

“ The Paleolithic Age in Europe seems to have terminated with the Glacial Age. But we are not to suppose it came to an end all over the earth at that time. On the contrary, some tribes of men never passed beyond that stage. When the light of civilization fell upon them they were still in the culture of the old Stone Age. We are to notice that in such cases the tribes thus discovered were very low in the scale. The probable data for the Paleolithic Age have formed the subject of this chapter. ”

“ In the generation that has elapsed since the first drawing of the cave-dweller artist was discovered, evidences of the wide-spread existence of man in an early epoch have multiplied indefinitely, and to-day the paleontologist traces the history of our race back beyond the iron and bronze ages, through a neolithic or polished-stone age, to a paleolithic or rough-stone age, with confidence born of unequivocal knowledge. ”

“ Once only does the writer depart from accepted theories of scientific research. After an at least long-continued study of existing evidence and information relating to the Stone Ages, the conviction grew upon him that the mysterious gap supposed by scientific teachers to divide Paleolithic from Neolithic man never really existed. No convulsion of nature, no new race of human beings is needed to explain the difference between the relics of Paleolithic and Neolithic strugglers. ”

“ In most countries the epochs run into and overlap one another, just as in modern times the Age of Steam runs into and overlaps the Age of Electricity.
5. The Paleolithic or Old Stone Age.—In the Old Stone Age man's implements were usually made of stone, and particularly of easily chipped flints, though sometimes bones, horns, tusks, and other material were used in their manufacture. These rude tools and weapons of Paleolithic man, found in gravel beds and in caves, are the very oldest things in existence shaped by human hands. ”

“ Whitney: “It is evident that there has been no unfolding of the intellectual faculties of the human race on this continent similar to that which has taken place in Central Europe. We can recognize no Paleolithic, Neolithic, Bronze, or Iron Ages.”46 Others assure us, that if present, the ages stand in reverse order. “The relics last used were by far the rudest, and the historic races, which are the survivors of the prehistoric, are the wildest of the two ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whatever interpretation be placed upon the questionable cases, however, there is convincing proof not only of man's existence, but of the definite stage of culture called paleolithic, in the later cold epoch of the glacial period. ”

“ But for a great many reasons, portions of the human skeleton are very rarely found in such circumstances that we are sure they date back to the Paleolithic Age, and especially is this true of the men of the River Drift. ”

“ The amount of positive knowledge in regard to the mysterious tribes of the older Stone Age, or the barbarians of the Neolithic period, or the struggling civilization of the early Metallic Ages, is lamentably deficient. On our Western Continent we have the mysterious remains in the gold-bearing gravels of the Pacific coast, the significance of which is yet in dispute. We have the Paleolithic Age of Europe, represented by the remains found in the gravels of the Delaware at Trenton, New Jersey. ”

“ Only two among the many known Paleolithic man localities will be briefly described. In the Perigord district of southwestern France a number of caves contain human relics ranging in age from early to late Paleolithic. ”

“ The age which we thus reach is called the Palæolithic, or "ancient" Stone age, because men made use of stone, which they chipped into shape, but, unlike the Neolithic people, never polished it. We find enormous numbers of these rough or Palæolithic stone implements both in caves and in the gravels deposited in the ancient beds of rivers. They are so abundant as to prove the existence of a very considerable human population in the remote ages when they were fashioned and used. ”

“ The neolithic period has often been loosely called the age of polished stone, from the fact that in no case has a polished or ground stone implement been found in a palaeolithic deposit. The term is not only loose but inaccurate. In the first place, there is no reason why the cave-men should Neolithic.not be found to have polished a stone implement on occasion, for they habitually polished their weapons of bone. Secondly, neolithic man was by no means uniform in his methods; he polished or ground the surfaces of such tools or weapons as would be improved by the process ”

“ This geological claim for a vast antiquity of the human race is supported by the similar claims of prehistoric archaeology and the science of culture, the evidence of all three departments of inquiry being intimately connected, and in perfect harmony.
During the last half century, the fact has been established that human bones and objects of human manufacture occur in such geological relation to the remains of fossil species of elephant, rhinoceros, hysena, bear, &c., as to lead to the distinct inference that man already existed during the ancient period of these now extinct mammalia. ”

“ Except for the stone tools, what do we know of the way men lived in the time range after 100,000 to perhaps 40,000 years ago or even later? We know that in the area from Europe to Palestine, at least some of the people (some of the time) lived in the fronts of caves and warmed themselves over fires. In Europe, in the cave layers of these times, we find the bones of different animals; the bones in the lowest layers belong to animals that lived in a warm climate; above them are the bones of those who could stand the cold, like the reindeer and mammoth. ”

“ From these considerations I find it impossible to follow MM. de Quatrefages and Hamy in their ethnological inferences, which are based on the assumption that in the above cases the human remains belong to Palæolithic men, who lived on in the same area through the stupendous changes which banished some and destroyed other Pleistocene Mammalia—changes in geography and in climate—into the Neolithic age, without, be it remarked, preserving any traces of the art of reproducing animal forms or of the ordinary Palæolithic implements of the men of the caves. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Prehistoric period for lack of all other means of dating has been divided by antiquarians, according to the material of which man formed his implements, into the Stone, the Bronze, and the late-Celtic or Iron Ages; the Stone age being further divided into an older, or Palaeolithic, section, in which all the so-called “celts,” or flint implements, were formed simply by chipping, and a newer Neolithic section, in which they were often ground and polished. ”

“ It will be well at this point to give a brief summary of the modern classification of the Palaeolithic implement-bearing deposits of Europe. From the labours of many geologists and prehistoric archaeologists, especially in France, a definite succession of types of implement has been established, and in some cases it has been found possible to correlate these with actual human remains and with certain well-marked events in the physical history of Pleistocene times, especially with the advance and retreat of ice-sheets. ”

“ This race, scattered and overthrown before the dawn of authentic history in Europe by the Celts and other intrusive peoples, was unquestionably that which succeeded the now extinct Palæocosmic race, and constituted the men of the so-called "Neolithic period," which thus connects itself with the modern history of Europe, from which it is not separated by any physical catastrophe like that which divides the older men of the mammoth age and the widely spread continents of the Post-glacial period from our modern days. ”

“ The first or palæolithic epoch is separated from the second or recent epoch by a vast and unknown lapse of time. We may place its date at somewhere about 200,000 years back. The remains of human origin belonging to it all occur under the conditions which we ordinarily describe as geological; they are found either in the drift deposits of our river-valleys or beneath the concreted floors of caves. They consist chiefly of rude stone weapons, in unpolished flint, chipped off by side-blows. ”

“ If we turn, now, to the evidences of quaternary culture we shall find a multitude of human relics buried in the pleistocene or post-pleistocene deposits of every continent of the globe. The widespread diffusion of these remains proves beyond peradventure the existence of man in every quarter of the earth at the beginning of the prehistoric epoch. Obviously, then, the descendants of the pliocene precursor must have wandered far and wide from the original abode during the long geological era that elapsed between the pliocene and post-pleistocene periods. ”

“ To the human mind the study of those relics by which the archæologist tries to recover and reconstruct the history of the past races and nations of man, should naturally form as engrossing a topic as the study of those relics by which the geologist tries to regain the history of the past races and families of the fauna and flora of the ancient world. Surely, as a mere matter of scientific pursuit, the ancient or fossil states of man should—for man himself—have attractions as great, at least, as the ancient or fossil states of plants and animals ”

“ These were the people described above, migrating along the shores of the Baltic with a new northern Maglemose culture and crude naturalistic art.
Conclusions as to the Old Stone Age
The above outline of the beginnings of the Neolithic Age shows that the Palæolithic represents a complete cycle of human development; we have traced its rise, its perfection, its decline. During this dawning period of the long prehistory of Europe the dominant features are the very great antiquity of the spirit of man and the fundamental similarity between the great steps of prehistory and of history. ”