Stone Age

“ The Stone Age is that period in the history of mankind during which stone is habitually used as a material for weapons and tools. Antiquaries find it convenient to make the Stone Age cease whenever metal implements come into common use, and the Bronze Age, or the Iron Age, supervenes. ”

“ I am at present concerned with the Stone Age, and if, as all agree, there was a time when the use of iron or of bronze, or of both together, first became known to the barbarous nations of the West of Europe, then it is evident that before that time they were unacquainted with the use of those metals, and were therefore in that stage of civilization which has been characterized as the Stone Age. ”

“ In the long years before primitive man learned to weld iron or bronze he formed his weapons and his tools from stone and flint; and geologists and antiquarians have discovered several of these "Ages of Stone" of different periods. For example, the Stone Age which our grandfathers spoke of is now called the Neolithic Age; and in the second quarter of the last century it became gradually admitted that man had existed earlier than that and had swung hammers and chipped edges in what we now call Palæolithic times. ”

“ The Old Stone Age shades off imperceptibly into the New Stone Age, in which man used polished stone implements. The transitional period—termed Mesolithic, or Middle Stone Age—lasted some six thousand years beginning about 12,000 B.C. Not only did Mesolithic man polish flint, basalt and other stone weapons and tools and thus render them more effective, but for the first time he also exploited the resources of his environment to an appreciable extent. ”

“ The second or later division of the period above referred to—the Ground Stone Age—is characterized by the employment of ground and often polished instruments of stone, much more perfect than the chipped forms, and therefore denoting a higher stage of human progress. Stone implements are found in nearly every part of the world, and, whatever their source, show a remarkable uniformity of pattern. ”

“ The period in man's life on the earth at which these people lived--the period before metals were known--has been named by archæologists the Stone Age. But the Stone Age covers two stages of human culture--one in which stone implements were fashioned unskilfully, and a second in which they were finished with expert and careful hands. ”

“ We may therefore imagine that the family tree or lines of descent of the races of the Old Stone Age consisted of a number of entirely separate branches, which had been completely formed in the great Eurasiatic continent, a land mass infinitely larger and more capable of producing a variety of races than the diminutive peninsular area of western Europe. ”

“ Not the least misunderstood of these subjects has been the classification of the antiquities of Western Europe, first practically adopted by the Danish antiquaries, under periods known as the Iron, Bronze, and Stone Ages; the Iron Age, so far as Denmark is concerned, being supposed to go back to about the Christian era, the Bronze Age to embrace a period of one or two thousand years previous to that date, and the Stone Age all previous time of man's occupation of that part of the world. ”

“ Some of them made limited use of raw metals and minerals, believing them to be only peculiar kinds of stone, never dreaming that they could be melted and refined and cast into implements and ornaments. Stone and Flint were the “metals” of the Mound-builders and other primitive peoples, while bone, shell, clay, wood and fibers were also much used. If peoples of the Stone Age had not made their humble beginnings, we would not be today living in the Age of Iron and enjoying the conveniences of civilization. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Their one token, these rude, but expressive stone implements, are found equally distributed from the Arctic Circle to the Equator, from Canada to Brazil, from England to Japan. Scientists whose culture and intelligence entitle their opinion to respect, place the Stone Age as here illustrated at least twenty thousand years before the birth of Christ. How absorbing is the interest attaching to these relics which ages have consecrated! No matter what our preconceived notions may be, science only deals with irrefutable facts. ”

“ No domesticated plants or animals. No pottery. Man a collector or hunter, more rarely a fisherman.
C. Transition Period, resembling B in most respects.
[A, B, and C make up the Old Stone Age, before the use of metals.]
[Pg 35]
D. Neolithic Period. Some stone implements polished. No metal except that copper is introduced toward the end of the period. Agriculture with domestic plants and animals. Pottery but no potter’s wheel. Dawn of Civilization.
E. Bronze Period. Bronze implements or utensils. Dawn of History. Begins about 2500 B. C. in northern Europe. ”

“ The men of the Old Stone Age were attracted to these natural camps and dwelling-places both by the abundance of the raw flint materials from which the palæoliths were fashioned and by the presence of game. ”

“ In 1750 Eccardus (17) of Braunschweig advanced the first steps toward prehistoric chronology, in expressing the opinion that the human race first lived in a period in which stone served as the only weapon and tool, and that this was followed by a bronze and then by an iron period of human culture. As early as 1700 a human skull was discovered at Cannstatt and was believed to be of a period as ancient as the mammoth and the cave-bear. [J]
France, favored beyond all other countries by the men of the Old Stone Age, was destined to become the classic centre of prehistoric archæology. ”

“ After countless centuries of slow advance, savages learned to fasten wooden handles to their stone tools and weapons and also to use such materials as jade and granite, which could be ground and polished into a variety of forms. Stone implements continued to be made during the greater part of the prehistoric period. Every region of the world has had a Stone Age. ”

“ This difference [52] in the character of the implements of the two periods, and the vast interval of time between the two, I pointed out in 1859, at the time when the discoveries of M. Boucher de Perthes, in the Valley of the Somme, first attracted the attention of English geologists and antiquaries. Since then, the necessity of subdividing what had until then been regarded as the Stone Age into two distinct stages, an earlier and a later, has been universally recognized ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are, however, two grand divisions to which no one can object—the Known and the Unknown. All objects naturally fall into these. But they are too sweeping in character and have not been adopted, although—regardless of form or material—all Stone-Age implements are of one or the other of these two grand divisions: those whose purpose is clear to us, and those regarding which we have no positive knowledge. Under these heads one might summarize all the implements or paraphernalia made use of by the man, the woman, the priest, the warrior, the child. ”

“ But the last traces of a Stone Age are hardly known to disappear anywhere, in spite of the general use of metals; and in studying this phase of the world's history for itself, it may be considered as still existing, not only among savages who have not fairly come to the use of iron, but even among civilized nations. Wherever the use of stone instruments, as they were used in the Stone Age proper, is to be found, there the Stone Age has not entirely passed away. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From the foregoing observations we may infer that the ages of iron and bronze in Northern and Central Europe were preceded by a stone age, the Neolithic, referable to that division of the post-tertiary epoch which I have called Recent, when the mammalia as well as the other organic remains accompanying the stone implements were of living species. ”

“ This aspect of primitive interchange, both of the raw material and the products of industrial skill, in so far as it is illustrated in the practice of the American Indian tribes, merits the most careful study, as a help to the interpretation of the archæological evidence pertaining to prehistoric times. To the superficial observer, stone is of universal occurrence; and it seems, therefore, needless to inquire where the implement-maker of any Stone age procured the rough block out of which he fashioned his weapon or tool. ”

“ The art of implement-making is in a low stage among tribes who use stone instruments, but are not in the habit of grinding or polishing any of them. There are remains which clearly prove the existence of such tribes, and thus the Stone Age falls into two divisions, the Unground Stone Age and the Ground Stone Age. ”

“ Though direct history gives but partial means of proving the existence of a Stone Age over Asia and Europe, the finding of ancient stone tools and weapons in almost every district of these two continents, proves that they were in former times inhabited by Stone Age races, though whether in any particular spot the tribes we first find living there are their descendants as well as their successors, this evidence cannot tell us. ”

“ In the first place, within the limits of the Stone Age itself, an unmistakable upward development in the course of ages is to be discerned, in the traces of an early period when stone implements were only used in their rude chipped state, and were never ground or polished, followed by a later period when grinding came to be applied to improve such stone instruments as required it. ”

“ Man, emerging as a distinct species, entered upon the Old Stone age, testified to by flint implements which we can just begin to see bear evidences of human shaping. The Old Stone Age lasted a long while. ”

“ Thus while in Europe there is a Stone age. divided into periods according to various types of implement disposed in geological strata, and followed in orderly succession by the ages of Bronze and Iron, in Africa can be found no true Stone age and practically no Bronze at all. ”

“ True, stone implements and arts persisted some time after the discovery by Columbus. Yet the recentness of the Stone Age in the United States is easily explained when one considers that America was unknown until 1492. Because stone implements were in use in remote portions of the United States two centuries ago, it does not follow that man on this continent is of no antiquity as compared with his brother in Europe.
In fact man may be, for aught we know, as old in America as in Europe or Asia. There have been hundreds of pages published by Professor Holmes, Dr. ”

“ For we cannot fail to be impressed by the regular and very close and unbroken succession of the geologic layers containing the Chellean and Acheulean artifacts. (See Fig. 55.)
None the less it follows that a long lapse of time must be allowed for each culture period, and for the advance in technique. (3) It is this wide distribution that has enabled the de Mortillets (father and son) , Capitan, Rivière, Reboux, Daleau, Peyrony, Obermaier, Commont, Schmidt, and others to establish in various parts of Europe the main stages of the industrial evolution of the Old Stone Age, or Lower Palæolithic. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He must, through long and painstaking labors both in the field and in the museum, form his deductions. In these he is aided by numerous reports, papers, books, and other published records of explorers, travelers, archæologists, and ethnologists. But he must remember that he is studying the past and not the present—an unwritten past, in fact.
It is well to emphasize the fact that “The Stone Age” is a classification of man’s handiwork. It is not a work relating to cultures, although remarks as to the culture and relation of tribes are suggested frequently by certain types of specimens. ”

“ All these culture stages of the Old Stone Age have left us little but material vestiges of its industries—bones, a few carvings on cave walls or on bones and ivory, and very many chipped flints. Nothing of wood, skin, fiber or other material for binding, which must have been used, survives.32 Much as these bones and stones tell us, they37 have really done more to increase our curiosity than to satisfy it. ”