From 8926cc0a306a9caef797212383c02e6f7a3dee93 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Harshil Darji Date: Tue, 2 Aug 2016 13:41:36 +0530 Subject: [PATCH] Cryptography Algorithm --- ciphers/Prehistoric Men.txt | 7193 +++++++++++++++++ ...ansposition_cipher_encrypt-decrypt_file.py | 35 + 2 files changed, 7228 insertions(+) create mode 100644 ciphers/Prehistoric Men.txt create mode 100644 ciphers/transposition_cipher_encrypt-decrypt_file.py diff --git a/ciphers/Prehistoric Men.txt b/ciphers/Prehistoric Men.txt new file mode 100644 index 000000000..86c4de821 --- /dev/null +++ b/ciphers/Prehistoric Men.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7193 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Prehistoric Men, by Robert J. (Robert John) +Braidwood, Illustrated by Susan T. Richert + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most +other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of +the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + +Title: Prehistoric Men +Author: Robert J. (Robert John) Braidwood +Release Date: July 28, 2016 [eBook #52664] +Language: English +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PREHISTORIC MEN*** + + +E-text prepared by Stephen Hutcheson, Dave Morgan, Charlie Howard, and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) + + + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustrations. + See 52664-h.htm or 52664-h.zip: + (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/52664/52664-h/52664-h.htm) + or + (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/52664/52664-h.zip) + + +Transcriber's note: + + Some characters might not display in this UTF-8 text + version. If so, the reader should consult the HTML + version referred to above. One example of this might + occur in the second paragraph under "Choppers and + Adze-like Tools", page 46, which contains the phrase + “an adze cutting edge is ? shaped”. The symbol before + “shaped” looks like a sharply-italicized sans-serif “L”. + Devices that cannot display that symbol may substitute + a question mark, a square, or other symbol. + + +PREHISTORIC MEN + +by + +ROBERT J. BRAIDWOOD + +Research Associate, Old World Prehistory + +Professor +Oriental Institute and Department of Anthropology +University of Chicago + +Drawings by Susan T. Richert + + +[Illustration] + +Chicago Natural History Museum +Popular Series +Anthropology, Number 37 + +Third Edition Issued in Co-operation with +The Oriental Institute, The University of Chicago + +Edited by Lillian A. Ross + +Printed in the United States of America +by Chicago Natural History Museum Press + +Copyright 1948, 1951, and 1957 by Chicago Natural History Museum + +First edition 1948 +Second edition 1951 +Third edition 1957 +Fourth edition 1959 + + +Preface + +[Illustration] + + +Like the writing of most professional archeologists, mine has been +confined to so-called learned papers. Good, bad, or indifferent, these +papers were in a jargon that only my colleagues and a few advanced +students could understand. Hence, when I was asked to do this little +book, I soon found it extremely difficult to say what I meant in simple +fashion. The style is new to me, but I hope the reader will not find it +forced or pedantic; at least I have done my very best to tell the story +simply and clearly. + +Many friends have aided in the preparation of the book. The whimsical +charm of Miss Susan Richert’s illustrations add enormously to the +spirit I wanted. She gave freely of her own time on the drawings and +in planning the book with me. My colleagues at the University of +Chicago, especially Professor Wilton M. Krogman (now of the University +of Pennsylvania), and also Mrs. Linda Braidwood, Associate of the +Oriental Institute, and Professors Fay-Cooper Cole and Sol Tax, of +the Department of Anthropology, gave me counsel in matters bearing on +their special fields, and the Department of Anthropology bore some of +the expense of the illustrations. From Mrs. Irma Hunter and Mr. Arnold +Maremont, who are not archeologists at all and have only an intelligent +layman’s notion of archeology, I had sound advice on how best to tell +the story. I am deeply indebted to all these friends. + +While I was preparing the second edition, I had the great fortune +to be able to rework the third chapter with Professor Sherwood L. +Washburn, now of the Department of Anthropology of the University of +California, and the fourth, fifth, and sixth chapters with Professor +Hallum L. Movius, Jr., of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University. The +book has gained greatly in accuracy thereby. In matters of dating, +Professor Movius and the indications of Professor W. F. Libby’s Carbon +14 chronology project have both encouraged me to choose the lowest +dates now current for the events of the Pleistocene Ice Age. There is +still no certain way of fixing a direct chronology for most of the +Pleistocene, but Professor Libby’s method appears very promising for +its end range and for proto-historic dates. In any case, this book +names “periods,” and new dates may be written in against mine, if new +and better dating systems appear. + +I wish to thank Dr. Clifford C. Gregg, Director of Chicago Natural +History Museum, for the opportunity to publish this book. My old +friend, Dr. Paul S. Martin, Chief Curator in the Department of +Anthropology, asked me to undertake the job and inspired me to complete +it. I am also indebted to Miss Lillian A. Ross, Associate Editor of +Scientific Publications, and to Mr. George I. Quimby, Curator of +Exhibits in Anthropology, for all the time they have given me in +getting the manuscript into proper shape. + + ROBERT J. BRAIDWOOD + _June 15, 1950_ + + + + +Preface to the Third Edition + + +In preparing the enlarged third edition, many of the above mentioned +friends have again helped me. I have picked the brains of Professor F. +Clark Howell of the Department of Anthropology of the University of +Chicago in reworking the earlier chapters, and he was very patient in +the matter, which I sincerely appreciate. + +All of Mrs. Susan Richert Allen’s original drawings appear, but a few +necessary corrections have been made in some of the charts and some new +drawings have been added by Mr. John Pfiffner, Staff Artist, Chicago +Natural History Museum. + + ROBERT J. BRAIDWOOD + _March 1, 1959_ + + + + +Contents + + + PAGE + How We Learn about Prehistoric Men 7 + + The Changing World in Which Prehistoric Men Lived 17 + + Prehistoric Men Themselves 22 + + Cultural Beginnings 38 + + More Evidence of Culture 56 + + Early Moderns 70 + + End and Prelude 92 + + The First Revolution 121 + + The Conquest of Civilization 144 + + End of Prehistory 162 + + Summary 176 + + List of Books 180 + + Index 184 + + + + +HOW WE LEARN about Prehistoric Men + +[Illustration] + + +Prehistory means the time before written history began. Actually, more +than 99 per cent of man’s story is prehistory. Man is at least half a +million years old, but he did not begin to write history (or to write +anything) until about 5,000 years ago. + +The men who lived in prehistoric times left us no history books, but +they did unintentionally leave a record of their presence and their way +of life. This record is studied and interpreted by different kinds of +scientists. + + +SCIENTISTS WHO FIND OUT ABOUT PREHISTORIC MEN + +The scientists who study the bones and teeth and any other parts +they find of the bodies of prehistoric men, are called _physical +anthropologists_. Physical anthropologists are trained, much like +doctors, to know all about the human body. They study living people, +too; they know more about the biological facts of human “races” than +anybody else. If the police find a badly decayed body in a trunk, +they ask a physical anthropologist to tell them what the person +originally looked like. The physical anthropologists who specialize in +prehistoric men work with fossils, so they are sometimes called _human +paleontologists_. + + +ARCHEOLOGISTS + +There is a kind of scientist who studies the things that prehistoric +men made and did. Such a scientist is called an _archeologist_. It is +the archeologist’s business to look for the stone and metal tools, the +pottery, the graves, and the caves or huts of the men who lived before +history began. + +But there is more to archeology than just looking for things. In +Professor V. Gordon Childe’s words, archeology “furnishes a sort of +history of human activity, provided always that the actions have +produced concrete results and left recognizable material traces.” You +will see that there are at least three points in what Childe says: + + 1. The archeologists have to find the traces of things left behind by + ancient man, and + + 2. Only a few objects may be found, for most of these were probably + too soft or too breakable to last through the years. However, + + 3. The archeologist must use whatever he can find to tell a story--to + make a “sort of history”--from the objects and living-places and + graves that have escaped destruction. + +What I mean is this: Let us say you are walking through a dump yard, +and you find a rusty old spark plug. If you want to think about what +the spark plug means, you quickly remember that it is a part of an +automobile motor. This tells you something about the man who threw +the spark plug on the dump. He either had an automobile, or he knew +or lived near someone who did. He can’t have lived so very long ago, +you’ll remember, because spark plugs and automobiles are only about +sixty years old. + +When you think about the old spark plug in this way you have +just been making the beginnings of what we call an archeological +_interpretation_; you have been making the spark plug tell a story. +It is the same way with the man-made things we archeologists find +and put in museums. Usually, only a few of these objects are pretty +to look at; but each of them has some sort of story to tell. Making +the interpretation of his finds is the most important part of the +archeologist’s job. It is the way he gets at the “sort of history of +human activity” which is expected of archeology. + + +SOME OTHER SCIENTISTS + +There are many other scientists who help the archeologist and the +physical anthropologist find out about prehistoric men. The geologists +help us tell the age of the rocks or caves or gravel beds in which +human bones or man-made objects are found. There are other scientists +with names which all begin with “paleo” (the Greek word for “old”). The +_paleontologists_ study fossil animals. There are also, for example, +such scientists as _paleobotanists_ and _paleoclimatologists_, who +study ancient plants and climates. These scientists help us to know +the kinds of animals and plants that were living in prehistoric times +and so could be used for food by ancient man; what the weather was +like; and whether there were glaciers. Also, when I tell you that +prehistoric men did not appear until long after the great dinosaurs had +disappeared, I go on the say-so of the paleontologists. They know that +fossils of men and of dinosaurs are not found in the same geological +period. The dinosaur fossils come in early periods, the fossils of men +much later. + +Since World War II even the atomic scientists have been helping the +archeologists. By testing the amount of radioactivity left in charcoal, +wood, or other vegetable matter obtained from archeological sites, they +have been able to date the sites. Shell has been used also, and even +the hair of Egyptian mummies. The dates of geological and climatic +events have also been discovered. Some of this work has been done from +drillings taken from the bottom of the sea. + +This dating by radioactivity has considerably shortened the dates which +the archeologists used to give. If you find that some of the dates +I give here are more recent than the dates you see in other books +on prehistory, it is because I am using one of the new lower dating +systems. + +[Illustration: RADIOCARBON CHART + +The rate of disappearance of radioactivity as time passes.[1]] + + [1] It is important that the limitations of the radioactive carbon + “dating” system be held in mind. As the statistics involved in + the system are used, there are two chances in three that the + “date” of the sample falls within the range given as plus or + minus an added number of years. For example, the “date” for the + Jarmo village (see chart), given as 6750 ± 200 B.C., really + means that there are only two chances in three that the real + date of the charcoal sampled fell between 6950 and 6550 B.C. + We have also begun to suspect that there are ways in which the + samples themselves may have become “contaminated,” either on + the early or on the late side. We now tend to be suspicious of + single radioactive carbon determinations, or of determinations + from one site alone. But as a fabric of consistent + determinations for several or more sites of one archeological + period, we gain confidence in the “dates.” + + +HOW THE SCIENTISTS FIND OUT + +So far, this chapter has been mainly about the people who find out +about prehistoric men. We also need a word about _how_ they find out. + +All our finds came by accident until about a hundred years ago. Men +digging wells, or digging in caves for fertilizer, often turned up +ancient swords or pots or stone arrowheads. People also found some odd +pieces of stone that didn’t look like natural forms, but they also +didn’t look like any known tool. As a result, the people who found them +gave them queer names; for example, “thunderbolts.” The people thought +the strange stones came to earth as bolts of lightning. We know now +that these strange stones were prehistoric stone tools. + +Many important finds still come to us by accident. In 1935, a British +dentist, A. T. Marston, found the first of two fragments of a very +important fossil human skull, in a gravel pit at Swanscombe, on the +River Thames, England. He had to wait nine months, until the face of +the gravel pit had been dug eight yards farther back, before the second +fragment appeared. They fitted! Then, twenty years later, still another +piece appeared. In 1928 workmen who were blasting out rock for the +breakwater in the port of Haifa began to notice flint tools. Thus the +story of cave men on Mount Carmel, in Palestine, began to be known. + +Planned archeological digging is only about a century old. Even before +this, however, a few men realized the significance of objects they dug +from the ground; one of these early archeologists was our own Thomas +Jefferson. The first real mound-digger was a German grocer’s clerk, +Heinrich Schliemann. Schliemann made a fortune as a merchant, first +in Europe and then in the California gold-rush of 1849. He became an +American citizen. Then he retired and had both money and time to test +an old idea of his. He believed that the heroes of ancient Troy and +Mycenae were once real Trojans and Greeks. He proved it by going to +Turkey and Greece and digging up the remains of both cities. + +Schliemann had the great good fortune to find rich and spectacular +treasures, and he also had the common sense to keep notes and make +descriptions of what he found. He proved beyond doubt that many ancient +city mounds can be _stratified_. This means that there may be the +remains of many towns in a mound, one above another, like layers in a +cake. + +You might like to have an idea of how mounds come to be in layers. +The original settlers may have chosen the spot because it had a good +spring and there were good fertile lands nearby, or perhaps because +it was close to some road or river or harbor. These settlers probably +built their town of stone and mud-brick. Finally, something would have +happened to the town--a flood, or a burning, or a raid by enemies--and +the walls of the houses would have fallen in or would have melted down +as mud in the rain. Nothing would have remained but the mud and debris +of a low mound of _one_ layer. + +The second settlers would have wanted the spot for the same reasons +the first settlers did--good water, land, and roads. Also, the second +settlers would have found a nice low mound to build their houses on, +a protection from floods. But again, something would finally have +happened to the second town, and the walls of _its_ houses would have +come tumbling down. This makes the _second_ layer. And so on.... + +In Syria I once had the good fortune to dig on a large mound that had +no less than fifteen layers. Also, most of the layers were thick, and +there were signs of rebuilding and repairs within each layer. The mound +was more than a hundred feet high. In each layer, the building material +used had been a soft, unbaked mud-brick, and most of the debris +consisted of fallen or rain-melted mud from these mud-bricks. + +This idea of _stratification_, like the cake layers, was already a +familiar one to the geologists by Schliemann’s time. They could show +that their lowest layer of rock was oldest or earliest, and that the +overlying layers became more recent as one moved upward. Schliemann’s +digging proved the same thing at Troy. His first (lowest and earliest) +city had at least nine layers above it; he thought that the second +layer contained the remains of Homer’s Troy. We now know that Homeric +Troy was layer VIIa from the bottom; also, we count eleven layers or +sub-layers in total. + +Schliemann’s work marks the beginnings of modern archeology. Scholars +soon set out to dig on ancient sites, from Egypt to Central America. + + +ARCHEOLOGICAL INFORMATION + +As time went on, the study of archeological materials--found either +by accident or by digging on purpose--began to show certain things. +Archeologists began to get ideas as to the kinds of objects that +belonged together. If you compared a mail-order catalogue of 1890 with +one of today, you would see a lot of differences. If you really studied +the two catalogues hard, you would also begin to see that certain +objects “go together.” Horseshoes and metal buggy tires and pieces of +harness would begin to fit into a picture with certain kinds of coal +stoves and furniture and china dishes and kerosene lamps. Our friend +the spark plug, and radios and electric refrigerators and light bulbs +would fit into a picture with different kinds of furniture and dishes +and tools. You won’t be old enough to remember the kind of hats that +women wore in 1890, but you’ve probably seen pictures of them, and you +know very well they couldn’t be worn with the fashions of today. + +This is one of the ways that archeologists study their materials. +The various tools and weapons and jewelry, the pottery, the kinds +of houses, and even the ways of burying the dead tend to fit into +pictures. Some archeologists call all of the things that go together to +make such a picture an _assemblage_. The assemblage of the first layer +of Schliemann’s Troy was as different from that of the seventh layer as +our 1900 mail-order catalogue is from the one of today. + +The archeologists who came after Schliemann began to notice other +things and to compare them with occurrences in modern times. The +idea that people will buy better mousetraps goes back into very +ancient times. Today, if we make good automobiles or radios, we can +sell some of them in Turkey or even in Timbuktu. This means that a +few present-day types of American automobiles and radios form part +of present-day “assemblages” in both Turkey and Timbuktu. The total +present-day “assemblage” of Turkey is quite different from that of +Timbuktu or that of America, but they have at least some automobiles +and some radios in common. + +Now these automobiles and radios will eventually wear out. Let us +suppose we could go to some remote part of Turkey or to Timbuktu in a +dream. We don’t know what the date is, in our dream, but we see all +sorts of strange things and ways of living in both places. Nobody +tells us what the date is. But suddenly we see a 1936 Ford; so we +know that in our dream it has to be at least the year 1936, and only +as many years after that as we could reasonably expect a Ford to keep +in running order. The Ford would probably break down in twenty years’ +time, so the Turkish or Timbuktu “assemblage” we’re seeing in our dream +has to date at about A.D. 1936-56. + +Archeologists not only “date” their ancient materials in this way; they +also see over what distances and between which peoples trading was +done. It turns out that there was a good deal of trading in ancient +times, probably all on a barter and exchange basis. + + +EVERYTHING BEGINS TO FIT TOGETHER + +Now we need to pull these ideas all together and see the complicated +structure the archeologists can build with their materials. + +Even the earliest archeologists soon found that there was a very long +range of prehistoric time which would yield only very simple things. +For this very long early part of prehistory, there was little to be +found but the flint tools which wandering, hunting and gathering +people made, and the bones of the wild animals they ate. Toward the +end of prehistoric time there was a general settling down with the +coming of agriculture, and all sorts of new things began to be made. +Archeologists soon got a general notion of what ought to appear with +what. Thus, it would upset a French prehistorian digging at the bottom +of a very early cave if he found a fine bronze sword, just as much as +it would upset him if he found a beer bottle. The people of his very +early cave layer simply could not have made bronze swords, which came +later, just as do beer bottles. Some accidental disturbance of the +layers of his cave must have happened. + +With any luck, archeologists do their digging in a layered, stratified +site. They find the remains of everything that would last through +time, in several different layers. They know that the assemblage in +the bottom layer was laid down earlier than the assemblage in the next +layer above, and so on up to the topmost layer, which is the latest. +They look at the results of other “digs” and find that some other +archeologist 900 miles away has found ax-heads in his lowest layer, +exactly like the ax-heads of their fifth layer. This means that their +fifth layer must have been lived in at about the same time as was the +first layer in the site 200 miles away. It also may mean that the +people who lived in the two layers knew and traded with each other. Or +it could mean that they didn’t necessarily know each other, but simply +that both traded with a third group at about the same time. + +You can see that the more we dig and find, the more clearly the main +facts begin to stand out. We begin to be more sure of which people +lived at the same time, which earlier and which later. We begin to +know who traded with whom, and which peoples seemed to live off by +themselves. We begin to find enough skeletons in burials so that the +physical anthropologists can tell us what the people looked like. We +get animal bones, and a paleontologist may tell us they are all bones +of wild animals; or he may tell us that some or most of the bones are +those of domesticated animals, for instance, sheep or cattle, and +therefore the people must have kept herds. + +More important than anything else--as our structure grows more +complicated and our materials increase--is the fact that “a sort +of history of human activity” does begin to appear. The habits or +traditions that men formed in the making of their tools and in the +ways they did things, begin to stand out for us. How characteristic +were these habits and traditions? What areas did they spread over? +How long did they last? We watch the different tools and the traces +of the way things were done--how the burials were arranged, what +the living-places were like, and so on. We wonder about the people +themselves, for the traces of habits and traditions are useful to us +only as clues to the men who once had them. So we ask the physical +anthropologists about the skeletons that we found in the burials. The +physical anthropologists tell us about the anatomy and the similarities +and differences which the skeletons show when compared with other +skeletons. The physical anthropologists are even working on a +method--chemical tests of the bones--that will enable them to discover +what the blood-type may have been. One thing is sure. We have never +found a group of skeletons so absolutely similar among themselves--so +cast from a single mould, so to speak--that we could claim to have a +“pure” race. I am sure we never shall. + +We become particularly interested in any signs of change--when new +materials and tool types and ways of doing things replace old ones. We +watch for signs of social change and progress in one way or another. + +We must do all this without one word of written history to aid us. +Everything we are concerned with goes back to the time _before_ men +learned to write. That is the prehistorian’s job--to find out what +happened before history began. + + + + +THE CHANGING WORLD in which Prehistoric Men Lived + +[Illustration] + + +Mankind, we’ll say, is at least a half million years old. It is very +hard to understand how long a time half a million years really is. +If we were to compare this whole length of time to one day, we’d get +something like this: The present time is midnight, and Jesus was +born just five minutes and thirty-six seconds ago. Earliest history +began less than fifteen minutes ago. Everything before 11:45 was in +prehistoric time. + +Or maybe we can grasp the length of time better in terms of +generations. As you know, primitive peoples tend to marry and have +children rather early in life. So suppose we say that twenty years +will make an average generation. At this rate there would be 25,000 +generations in a half-million years. But our United States is much less +than ten generations old, twenty-five generations take us back before +the time of Columbus, Julius Caesar was alive just 100 generations ago, +David was king of Israel less than 150 generations ago, 250 generations +take us back to the beginning of written history. And there were 24,750 +generations of men before written history began! + +I should probably tell you that there is a new method of prehistoric +dating which would cut the earliest dates in my reckoning almost +in half. Dr. Cesare Emiliani, combining radioactive (C14) and +chemical (oxygen isotope) methods in the study of deep-sea borings, +has developed a system which would lower the total range of human +prehistory to about 300,000 years. The system is still too new to have +had general examination and testing. Hence, I have not used it in this +book; it would mainly affect the dates earlier than 25,000 years ago. + + +CHANGES IN ENVIRONMENT + +The earth probably hasn’t changed much in the last 5,000 years (250 +generations). Men have built things on its surface and dug into it and +drawn boundaries on maps of it, but the places where rivers, lakes, +seas, and mountains now stand have changed very little. + +In earlier times the earth looked very different. Geologists call the +last great geological period the _Pleistocene_. It began somewhere +between a half million and a million years ago, and was a time of great +changes. Sometimes we call it the Ice Age, for in the Pleistocene +there were at least three or four times when large areas of earth +were covered with glaciers. The reason for my uncertainty is that +while there seem to have been four major mountain or alpine phases of +glaciation, there may only have been three general continental phases +in the Old World.[2] + + [2] This is a complicated affair and I do not want to bother you + with its details. Both the alpine and the continental ice sheets + seem to have had minor fluctuations during their _main_ phases, + and the advances of the later phases destroyed many of the + traces of the earlier phases. The general textbooks have tended + to follow the names and numbers established for the Alps early + in this century by two German geologists. I will not bother you + with the names, but there were _four_ major phases. It is the + second of these alpine phases which seems to fit the traces of + the earliest of the great continental glaciations. In this book, + I will use the four-part system, since it is the most familiar, + but will add the word _alpine_ so you may remember to make the + transition to the continental system if you wish to do so. + +Glaciers are great sheets of ice, sometimes over a thousand feet +thick, which are now known only in Greenland and Antarctica and in +high mountains. During several of the glacial periods in the Ice Age, +the glaciers covered most of Canada and the northern United States and +reached down to southern England and France in Europe. Smaller ice +sheets sat like caps on the Rockies, the Alps, and the Himalayas. The +continental glaciation only happened north of the equator, however, so +remember that “Ice Age” is only half true. + +As you know, the amount of water on and about the earth does not vary. +These large glaciers contained millions of tons of water frozen into +ice. Because so much water was frozen and contained in the glaciers, +the water level of lakes and oceans was lowered. Flooded areas were +drained and appeared as dry land. There were times in the Ice Age when +there was no English Channel, so that England was not an island, and a +land bridge at the Dardanelles probably divided the Mediterranean from +the Black Sea. + +A very important thing for people living during the time of a +glaciation was the region adjacent to the glacier. They could not, of +course, live on the ice itself. The questions would be how close could +they live to it, and how would they have had to change their way of +life to do so. + + +GLACIERS CHANGE THE WEATHER + +Great sheets of ice change the weather. When the front of a glacier +stood at Milwaukee, the weather must have been bitterly cold in +Chicago. The climate of the whole world would have been different, and +you can see how animals and men would have been forced to move from one +place to another in search of food and warmth. + +On the other hand, it looks as if only a minor proportion of the whole +Ice Age was really taken up by times of glaciation. In between came +the _interglacial_ periods. During these times the climate around +Chicago was as warm as it is now, and sometimes even warmer. It may +interest you to know that the last great glacier melted away less than +10,000 years ago. Professor Ernst Antevs thinks we may be living in an +interglacial period and that the Ice Age may not be over yet. So if you +want to make a killing in real estate for your several hundred times +great-grandchildren, you might buy some land in the Arizona desert or +the Sahara. + +We do not yet know just why the glaciers appeared and disappeared, as +they did. It surely had something to do with an increase in rainfall +and a fall in temperature. It probably also had to do with a general +tendency for the land to rise at the beginning of the Pleistocene. We +know there was some mountain-building at that time. Hence, rain-bearing +winds nourished the rising and cooler uplands with snow. An increase +in all three of these factors--if they came together--would only have +needed to be slight. But exactly why this happened we do not know. + +The reason I tell you about the glaciers is simply to remind you of the +changing world in which prehistoric men lived. Their surroundings--the +animals and plants they used for food, and the weather they had to +protect themselves from--were always changing. On the other hand, this +change happened over so long a period of time and was so slow that +individual people could not have noticed it. Glaciers, about which they +probably knew nothing, moved in hundreds of miles to the north of them. +The people must simply have wandered ever more southward in search +of the plants and animals on which they lived. Or some men may have +stayed where they were and learned to hunt different animals and eat +different foods. Prehistoric men had to keep adapting themselves to new +environments and those who were most adaptive were most successful. + + +OTHER CHANGES + +Changes took place in the men themselves as well as in the ways they +lived. As time went on, they made better tools and weapons. Then, too, +we begin to find signs of how they started thinking of other things +than food and the tools to get it with. We find that they painted on +the walls of caves, and decorated their tools; we find that they buried +their dead. + +At about the time when the last great glacier was finally melting away, +men in the Near East made the first basic change in human economy. +They began to plant grain, and they learned to raise and herd certain +animals. This meant that they could store food in granaries and “on the +hoof” against the bad times of the year. This first really basic change +in man’s way of living has been called the “food-producing revolution.” +By the time it happened, a modern kind of climate was beginning. Men +had already grown to look as they do now. Know-how in ways of living +had developed and progressed, slowly but surely, up to a point. It was +impossible for men to go beyond that point if they only hunted and +fished and gathered wild foods. Once the basic change was made--once +the food-producing revolution became effective--technology leaped ahead +and civilization and written history soon began. + + + + +Prehistoric Men THEMSELVES + +[Illustration] + + +DO WE KNOW WHERE MAN ORIGINATED? + +For a long time some scientists thought the “cradle of mankind” was in +central Asia. Other scientists insisted it was in Africa, and still +others said it might have been in Europe. Actually, we don’t know +where it was. We don’t even know that there was only _one_ “cradle.” +If we had to choose a “cradle” at this moment, we would probably say +Africa. But the southern portions of Asia and Europe may also have been +included in the general area. The scene of the early development of +mankind was certainly the Old World. It is pretty certain men didn’t +reach North or South America until almost the end of the Ice Age--had +they done so earlier we would certainly have found some trace of them +by now. + +The earliest tools we have yet found come from central and south +Africa. By the dating system I’m using, these tools must be over +500,000 years old. There are now reports that a few such early tools +have been found--at the Sterkfontein cave in South Africa--along with +the bones of small fossil men called “australopithecines.” + +Not all scientists would agree that the australopithecines were “men,” +or would agree that the tools were made by the australopithecines +themselves. For these sticklers, the earliest bones of men come from +the island of Java. The date would be about 450,000 years ago. So far, +we have not yet found the tools which we suppose these earliest men in +the Far East must have made. + +Let me say it another way. How old are the earliest traces of men we +now have? Over half a million years. This was a time when the first +alpine glaciation was happening in the north. What has been found so +far? The tools which the men of those times made, in different parts +of Africa. It is now fairly generally agreed that the “men” who made +the tools were the australopithecines. There is also a more “man-like” +jawbone at Kanam in Kenya, but its find-spot has been questioned. The +next earliest bones we have were found in Java, and they may be almost +a hundred thousand years younger than the earliest African finds. We +haven’t yet found the tools of these early Javanese. Our knowledge of +tool-using in Africa spreads quickly as time goes on: soon after the +appearance of tools in the south we shall have them from as far north +as Algeria. + +Very soon after the earliest Javanese come the bones of slightly more +developed people in Java, and the jawbone of a man who once lived in +what is now Germany. The same general glacial beds which yielded the +later Javanese bones and the German jawbone also include tools. These +finds come from the time of the second alpine glaciation. + +So this is the situation. By the time of the end of the second alpine +or first continental glaciation (say 400,000 years ago) we have traces +of men from the extremes of the more southerly portions of the Old +World--South Africa, eastern Asia, and western Europe. There are also +some traces of men in the middle ground. In fact, Professor Franz +Weidenreich believed that creatures who were the immediate ancestors +of men had already spread over Europe, Africa, and Asia by the time +the Ice Age began. We certainly have no reason to disbelieve this, but +fortunate accidents of discovery have not yet given us the evidence to +prove it. + + +MEN AND APES + +Many people used to get extremely upset at the ill-formed notion +that “man descended from the apes.” Such words were much more likely +to start fights or “monkey trials” than the correct notion that all +living animals, including man, ascended or evolved from a single-celled +organism which lived in the primeval seas hundreds of millions of years +ago. Men are mammals, of the order called Primates, and man’s living +relatives are the great apes. Men didn’t “descend” from the apes or +apes from men, and mankind must have had much closer relatives who have +since become extinct. + +Men stand erect. They also walk and run on their two feet. Apes are +happiest in trees, swinging with their arms from branch to branch. +Few branches of trees will hold the mighty gorilla, although he still +manages to sleep in trees. Apes can’t stand really erect in our sense, +and when they have to run on the ground, they use the knuckles of their +hands as well as their feet. + +A key group of fossil bones here are the south African +australopithecines. These are called the _Australopithecinae_ or +“man-apes” or sometimes even “ape-men.” We do not _know_ that they were +directly ancestral to men but they can hardly have been so to apes. +Presently I’ll describe them a bit more. The reason I mention them +here is that while they had brains no larger than those of apes, their +hipbones were enough like ours so that they must have stood erect. +There is no good reason to think they couldn’t have walked as we do. + + +BRAINS, HANDS, AND TOOLS + +Whether the australopithecines were our ancestors or not, the proper +ancestors of men must have been able to stand erect and to walk on +their two feet. Three further important things probably were involved, +next, before they could become men proper. These are: + + 1. The increasing size and development of the brain. + + 2. The increasing usefulness (specialization) of the thumb and hand. + + 3. The use of tools. + +Nobody knows which of these three is most important, or which came +first. Most probably the growth of all three things was very much +blended together. If you think about each of the things, you will see +what I mean. Unless your hand is more flexible than a paw, and your +thumb will work against (or oppose) your fingers, you can’t hold a tool +very well. But you wouldn’t get the idea of using a tool unless you had +enough brain to help you see cause and effect. And it is rather hard to +see how your hand and brain would develop unless they had something to +practice on--like using tools. In Professor Krogman’s words, “the hand +must become the obedient servant of the eye and the brain.” It is the +_co-ordination_ of these things that counts. + +Many other things must have been happening to the bodies of the +creatures who were the ancestors of men. Our ancestors had to develop +organs of speech. More than that, they had to get the idea of letting +_certain sounds_ made with these speech organs have _certain meanings_. + +All this must have gone very slowly. Probably everything was developing +little by little, all together. Men became men very slowly. + + +WHEN SHALL WE CALL MEN MEN? + +What do I mean when I say “men”? People who looked pretty much as we +do, and who used different tools to do different things, are men to me. +We’ll probably never know whether the earliest ones talked or not. They +probably had vocal cords, so they could make sounds, but did they know +how to make sounds work as symbols to carry meanings? But if the fossil +bones look like our skeletons, and if we find tools which we’ll agree +couldn’t have been made by nature or by animals, then I’d say we had +traces of _men_. + +The australopithecine finds of the Transvaal and Bechuanaland, in +south Africa, are bound to come into the discussion here. I’ve already +told you that the australopithecines could have stood upright and +walked on their two hind legs. They come from the very base of the +Pleistocene or Ice Age, and a few coarse stone tools have been found +with the australopithecine fossils. But there are three varieties +of the australopithecines and they last on until a time equal to +that of the second alpine glaciation. They are the best suggestion +we have yet as to what the ancestors of men _may_ have looked like. +They were certainly closer to men than to apes. Although their brain +size was no larger than the brains of modern apes their body size and +stature were quite small; hence, relative to their small size, their +brains were large. We have not been able to prove without doubt that +the australopithecines were _tool-making_ creatures, even though the +recent news has it that tools have been found with australopithecine +bones. The doubt as to whether the australopithecines used the tools +themselves goes like this--just suppose some man-like creature (whose +bones we have not yet found) made the tools and used them to kill +and butcher australopithecines. Hence a few experts tend to let +australopithecines still hang in limbo as “man-apes.” + + +THE EARLIEST MEN WE KNOW + +I’ll postpone talking about the tools of early men until the next +chapter. The men whose bones were the earliest of the Java lot have +been given the name _Meganthropus_. The bones are very fragmentary. We +would not understand them very well unless we had the somewhat later +Javanese lot--the more commonly known _Pithecanthropus_ or “Java +man”--against which to refer them for study. One of the less well-known +and earliest fragments, a piece of lower jaw and some teeth, rather +strongly resembles the lower jaws and teeth of the australopithecine +type. Was _Meganthropus_ a sort of half-way point between the +australopithecines and _Pithecanthropus_? It is still too early to say. +We shall need more finds before we can be definite one way or the other. + +Java man, _Pithecanthropus_, comes from geological beds equal in age +to the latter part of the second alpine glaciation; the _Meganthropus_ +finds refer to beds of the beginning of this glaciation. The first +finds of Java man were made in 1891-92 by Dr. Eugene Dubois, a Dutch +doctor in the colonial service. Finds have continued to be made. There +are now bones enough to account for four skulls. There are also four +jaws and some odd teeth and thigh bones. Java man, generally speaking, +was about five feet six inches tall, and didn’t hold his head very +erect. His skull was very thick and heavy and had room for little more +than two-thirds as large a brain as we have. He had big teeth and a big +jaw and enormous eyebrow ridges. + +No tools were found in the geological deposits where bones of Java man +appeared. There are some tools in the same general area, but they come +a bit later in time. One reason we accept the Java man as man--aside +from his general anatomical appearance--is that these tools probably +belonged to his near descendants. + +Remember that there are several varieties of men in the whole early +Java lot, at least two of which are earlier than the _Pithecanthropus_, +“Java man.” Some of the earlier ones seem to have gone in for +bigness, in tooth-size at least. _Meganthropus_ is one of these +earlier varieties. As we said, he _may_ turn out to be a link to +the australopithecines, who _may_ or _may not_ be ancestral to men. +_Meganthropus_ is best understandable in terms of _Pithecanthropus_, +who appeared later in the same general area. _Pithecanthropus_ is +pretty well understandable from the bones he left us, and also because +of his strong resemblance to the fully tool-using cave-dwelling “Peking +man,” _Sinanthropus_, about whom we shall talk next. But you can see +that the physical anthropologists and prehistoric archeologists still +have a lot of work to do on the problem of earliest men. + + +PEKING MEN AND SOME EARLY WESTERNERS + +The earliest known Chinese are called _Sinanthropus_, or “Peking man,” +because the finds were made near that city. In World War II, the United +States Marine guard at our Embassy in Peking tried to help get the +bones out of the city before the Japanese attack. Nobody knows where +these bones are now. The Red Chinese accuse us of having stolen them. +They were last seen on a dock-side at a Chinese port. But should you +catch a Marine with a sack of old bones, perhaps we could achieve peace +in Asia by returning them! Fortunately, there is a complete set of +casts of the bones. + +Peking man lived in a cave in a limestone hill, made tools, cracked +animal bones to get the marrow out, and used fire. Incidentally, the +bones of Peking man were found because Chinese dig for what they call +“dragon bones” and “dragon teeth.” Uneducated Chinese buy these things +in their drug stores and grind them into powder for medicine. The +“dragon teeth” and “bones” are really fossils of ancient animals, and +sometimes of men. The people who supply the drug stores have learned +where to dig for strange bones and teeth. Paleontologists who get to +China go to the drug stores to buy fossils. In a roundabout way, this +is how the fallen-in cave of Peking man at Choukoutien was discovered. + +Peking man was not quite as tall as Java man but he probably stood +straighter. His skull looked very much like that of the Java skull +except that it had room for a slightly larger brain. His face was less +brutish than was Java man’s face, but this isn’t saying much. + +Peking man dates from early in the interglacial period following the +second alpine glaciation. He probably lived close to 350,000 years +ago. There are several finds to account for in Europe by about this +time, and one from northwest Africa. The very large jawbone found +near Heidelberg in Germany is doubtless even earlier than Peking man. +The beds where it was found are of second alpine glacial times, and +recently some tools have been said to have come from the same beds. +There is not much I need tell you about the Heidelberg jaw save that it +seems certainly to have belonged to an early man, and that it is very +big. + +Another find in Germany was made at Steinheim. It consists of the +fragmentary skull of a man. It is very important because of its +relative completeness, but it has not yet been fully studied. The bone +is thick, but the back of the head is neither very low nor primitive, +and the face is also not primitive. The forehead does, however, have +big ridges over the eyes. The more fragmentary skull from Swanscombe in +England (p. 11) has been much more carefully studied. Only the top and +back of that skull have been found. Since the skull rounds up nicely, +it has been assumed that the face and forehead must have been quite +“modern.” Careful comparison with Steinheim shows that this was not +necessarily so. This is important because it bears on the question of +how early truly “modern” man appeared. + +Recently two fragmentary jaws were found at Ternafine in Algeria, +northwest Africa. They look like the jaws of Peking man. Tools were +found with them. Since no jaws have yet been found at Steinheim or +Swanscombe, but the time is the same, one wonders if these people had +jaws like those of Ternafine. + + +WHAT HAPPENED TO JAVA AND PEKING MEN + +Professor Weidenreich thought that there were at least a dozen ways in +which the Peking man resembled the modern Mongoloids. This would seem +to indicate that Peking man was really just a very early Chinese. + +Several later fossil men have been found in the Java-Australian area. +The best known of these is the so-called Solo man. There are some finds +from Australia itself which we now know to be quite late. But it looks +as if we may assume a line of evolution from Java man down to the +modern Australian natives. During parts of the Ice Age there was a land +bridge all the way from Java to Australia. + + +TWO ENGLISHMEN WHO WEREN’T OLD + +The older textbooks contain descriptions of two English finds which +were thought to be very old. These were called Piltdown (_Eoanthropus +dawsoni_) and Galley Hill. The skulls were very modern in appearance. +In 1948-49, British scientists began making chemical tests which proved +that neither of these finds is very old. It is now known that both +“Piltdown man” and the tools which were said to have been found with +him were part of an elaborate fake! + + +TYPICAL “CAVE MEN” + +The next men we have to talk about are all members of a related group. +These are the Neanderthal group. “Neanderthal man” himself was found in +the Neander Valley, near Düsseldorf, Germany, in 1856. He was the first +human fossil to be recognized as such. + +[Illustration: PRINCIPAL KNOWN TYPES OF FOSSIL MEN + + CRO-MAGNON + NEANDERTHAL + MODERN SKULL + COMBE-CAPELLE + SINANTHROPUS + PITHECANTHROPUS] + +Some of us think that the neanderthaloids proper are only those people +of western Europe who didn’t get out before the beginning of the last +great glaciation, and who found themselves hemmed in by the glaciers +in the Alps and northern Europe. Being hemmed in, they intermarried +a bit too much and developed into a special type. Professor F. Clark +Howell sees it this way. In Europe, the earliest trace of men we +now know is the Heidelberg jaw. Evolution continued in Europe, from +Heidelberg through the Swanscombe and Steinheim types to a group of +pre-neanderthaloids. There are traces of these pre-neanderthaloids +pretty much throughout Europe during the third interglacial period--say +100,000 years ago. The pre-neanderthaloids are represented by such +finds as the ones at Ehringsdorf in Germany and Saccopastore in Italy. +I won’t describe them for you, since they are simply less extreme than +the neanderthaloids proper--about half way between Steinheim and the +classic Neanderthal people. + +Professor Howell believes that the pre-neanderthaloids who happened to +get caught in the pocket of the southwest corner of Europe at the onset +of the last great glaciation became the classic Neanderthalers. Out in +the Near East, Howell thinks, it is possible to see traces of people +evolving from the pre-neanderthaloid type toward that of fully modern +man. Certainly, we don’t see such extreme cases of “neanderthaloidism” +outside of western Europe. + +There are at least a dozen good examples in the main or classic +Neanderthal group in Europe. They date to just before and in the +earlier part of the last great glaciation (85,000 to 40,000 years ago). +Many of the finds have been made in caves. The “cave men” the movies +and the cartoonists show you are probably meant to be Neanderthalers. +I’m not at all sure they dragged their women by the hair; the women +were probably pretty tough, too! + +Neanderthal men had large bony heads, but plenty of room for brains. +Some had brain cases even larger than the average for modern man. Their +faces were heavy, and they had eyebrow ridges of bone, but the ridges +were not as big as those of Java man. Their foreheads were very low, +and they didn’t have much chin. They were about five feet three inches +tall, but were heavy and barrel-chested. But the Neanderthalers didn’t +slouch as much as they’ve been blamed for, either. + +One important thing about the Neanderthal group is that there is a fair +number of them to study. Just as important is the fact that we know +something about how they lived, and about some of the tools they made. + + +OTHER MEN CONTEMPORARY WITH THE NEANDERTHALOIDS + +We have seen that the neanderthaloids seem to be a specialization +in a corner of Europe. What was going on elsewhere? We think that +the pre-neanderthaloid type was a generally widespread form of men. +From this type evolved other more or less extreme although generally +related men. The Solo finds in Java form one such case. Another was the +Rhodesian man of Africa, and the more recent Hopefield finds show more +of the general Rhodesian type. It is more confusing than it needs to be +if these cases outside western Europe are called neanderthaloids. They +lived during the same approximate time range but they were all somewhat +different-looking people. + + +EARLY MODERN MEN + +How early is modern man (_Homo sapiens_), the “wise man”? Some people +have thought that he was very early, a few still think so. Piltdown +and Galley Hill, which were quite modern in anatomical appearance and +_supposedly_ very early in date, were the best “evidence” for very +early modern men. Now that Piltdown has been liquidated and Galley Hill +is known to be very late, what is left of the idea? + +The backs of the skulls of the Swanscombe and Steinheim finds look +rather modern. Unless you pay attention to the face and forehead of the +Steinheim find--which not many people have--and perhaps also consider +the Ternafine jaws, you might come to the conclusion that the crown of +the Swanscombe head was that of a modern-like man. + +Two more skulls, again without faces, are available from a French +cave site, Fontéchevade. They come from the time of the last great +interglacial, as did the pre-neanderthaloids. The crowns of the +Fontéchevade skulls also look quite modern. There is a bit of the +forehead preserved on one of these skulls and the brow-ridge is not +heavy. Nevertheless, there is a suggestion that the bones belonged to +an immature individual. In this case, his (or even more so, if _her_) +brow-ridges would have been weak anyway. The case for the Fontéchevade +fossils, as modern type men, is little stronger than that for +Swanscombe, although Professor Vallois believes it a good case. + +It seems to add up to the fact that there were people living in +Europe--before the classic neanderthaloids--who looked more modern, +in some features, than the classic western neanderthaloids did. Our +best suggestion of what men looked like--just before they became fully +modern--comes from a cave on Mount Carmel in Palestine. + + +THE FIRST MODERNS + +Professor T. D. McCown and the late Sir Arthur Keith, who studied the +Mount Carmel bones, figured out that one of the two groups involved +was as much as 70 per cent modern. There were, in fact, two groups or +varieties of men in the Mount Carmel caves and in at least two other +Palestinian caves of about the same time. The time would be about that +of the onset of colder weather, when the last glaciation was beginning +in the north--say 75,000 years ago. + +The 70 per cent modern group came from only one cave, Mugharet es-Skhul +(“cave of the kids”). The other group, from several caves, had bones of +men of the type we’ve been calling pre-neanderthaloid which we noted +were widespread in Europe and beyond. The tools which came with each +of these finds were generally similar, and McCown and Keith, and other +scholars since their study, have tended to assume that both the Skhul +group and the pre-neanderthaloid group came from exactly the same time. +The conclusion was quite natural: here was a population of men in the +act of evolving in two different directions. But the time may not be +exactly the same. It is very difficult to be precise, within say 10,000 +years, for a time some 75,000 years ago. If the Skhul men are in fact +later than the pre-neanderthaloid group of Palestine, as some of us +think, then they show how relatively modern some men were--men who +lived at the same time as the classic Neanderthalers of the European +pocket. + +Soon after the first extremely cold phase of the last glaciation, we +begin to get a number of bones of completely modern men in Europe. +We also get great numbers of the tools they made, and their living +places in caves. Completely modern skeletons begin turning up in caves +dating back to toward 40,000 years ago. The time is about that of the +beginning of the second phase of the last glaciation. These skeletons +belonged to people no different from many people we see today. Like +people today, not everybody looked alike. (The positions of the more +important fossil men of later Europe are shown in the chart on page +72.) + + +DIFFERENCES IN THE EARLY MODERNS + +The main early European moderns have been divided into two groups, the +Cro-Magnon group and the Combe Capelle-Brünn group. Cro-Magnon people +were tall and big-boned, with large, long, and rugged heads. They +must have been built like many present-day Scandinavians. The Combe +Capelle-Brünn people were shorter; they had narrow heads and faces, and +big eyebrow-ridges. Of course we don’t find the skin or hair of these +people. But there is little doubt they were Caucasoids (“Whites”). + +Another important find came in the Italian Riviera, near Monte Carlo. +Here, in a cave near Grimaldi, there was a grave containing a woman +and a young boy, buried together. The two skeletons were first called +“Negroid” because some features of their bones were thought to resemble +certain features of modern African Negro bones. But more recently, +Professor E. A. Hooton and other experts questioned the use of the word +“Negroid” in describing the Grimaldi skeletons. It is true that nothing +is known of the skin color, hair form, or any other fleshy feature of +the Grimaldi people, so that the word “Negroid” in its usual meaning is +not proper here. It is also not clear whether the features of the bones +claimed to be “Negroid” are really so at all. + +From a place called Wadjak, in Java, we have “proto-Australoid” skulls +which closely resemble those of modern Australian natives. Some of +the skulls found in South Africa, especially the Boskop skull, look +like those of modern Bushmen, but are much bigger. The ancestors of +the Bushmen seem to have once been very widespread south of the Sahara +Desert. True African Negroes were forest people who apparently expanded +out of the west central African area only in the last several thousand +years. Although dark in skin color, neither the Australians nor the +Bushmen are Negroes; neither the Wadjak nor the Boskop skulls are +“Negroid.” + +As we’ve already mentioned, Professor Weidenreich believed that Peking +man was already on the way to becoming a Mongoloid. Anyway, the +Mongoloids would seem to have been present by the time of the “Upper +Cave” at Choukoutien, the _Sinanthropus_ find-spot. + + +WHAT THE DIFFERENCES MEAN + +What does all this difference mean? It means that, at one moment in +time, within each different area, men tended to look somewhat alike. +From area to area, men tended to look somewhat different, just as +they do today. This is all quite natural. People _tended_ to mate +near home; in the anthropological jargon, they made up geographically +localized breeding populations. The simple continental division of +“stocks”--black = Africa, yellow = Asia, white = Europe--is too simple +a picture to fit the facts. People became accustomed to life in some +particular area within a continent (we might call it a “natural area”). +As they went on living there, they evolved towards some particular +physical variety. It would, of course, have been difficult to draw +a clear boundary between two adjacent areas. There must always have +been some mating across the boundaries in every case. One thing human +beings don’t do, and never have done, is to mate for “purity.” It is +self-righteous nonsense when we try to kid ourselves into thinking that +they do. + +I am not going to struggle with the whole business of modern stocks and +races. This is a book about prehistoric men, not recent historic or +modern men. My physical anthropologist friends have been very patient +in helping me to write and rewrite this chapter--I am not going to +break their patience completely. Races are their business, not mine, +and they must do the writing about races. I shall, however, give two +modern definitions of race, and then make one comment. + + Dr. William G. Boyd, professor of Immunochemistry, School of + Medicine, Boston University: “We may define a human race as a + population which differs significantly from other human populations + in regard to the frequency of one or more of the genes it + possesses.” + + Professor Sherwood L. Washburn, professor of Physical Anthropology, + Department of Anthropology, the University of California: “A ‘race’ + is a group of genetically similar populations, and races intergrade + because there are always intermediate populations.” + +My comment is that the ideas involved here are all biological: they +concern groups, _not_ individuals. Boyd and Washburn may differ a bit +on what they want to consider a “population,” but a population is a +group nevertheless, and genetics is biology to the hilt. Now a lot of +people still think of race in terms of how people dress or fix their +food or of other habits or customs they have. The next step is to talk +about racial “purity.” None of this has anything whatever to do with +race proper, which is a matter of the biology of groups. + +Incidentally, I’m told that if man very carefully _controls_ +the breeding of certain animals over generations--dogs, cattle, +chickens--he might achieve a “pure” race of animals. But he doesn’t do +it. Some unfortunate genetic trait soon turns up, so this has just as +carefully to be bred out again, and so on. + + +SUMMARY OF PRESENT KNOWLEDGE OF FOSSIL MEN + +The earliest bones of men we now have--upon which all the experts +would probably agree--are those of _Meganthropus_, from Java, of about +450,000 years ago. The earlier australopithecines of Africa were +possibly not tool-users and may not have been ancestral to men at all. +But there is an alternate and evidently increasingly stronger chance +that some of them may have been. The Kanam jaw from Kenya, another +early possibility, is not only very incomplete but its find-spot is +very questionable. + +Java man proper, _Pithecanthropus_, comes next, at about 400,000 years +ago, and the big Heidelberg jaw in Germany must be of about the same +date. Next comes Swanscombe in England, Steinheim in Germany, the +Ternafine jaws in Algeria, and Peking man, _Sinanthropus_. They all +date to the second great interglacial period, about 350,000 years ago. + +Piltdown and Galley Hill are out, and with them, much of the starch +in the old idea that there were two distinct lines of development +in human evolution: (1) a line of “paleoanthropic” development from +Heidelberg to the Neanderthalers where it became extinct, and (2) a +very early “modern” line, through Piltdown, Galley Hill, Swanscombe, to +us. Swanscombe, Steinheim, and Ternafine are just as easily cases of +very early pre-neanderthaloids. + +The pre-neanderthaloids were very widespread during the third +interglacial: Ehringsdorf, Saccopastore, some of the Mount Carmel +people, and probably Fontéchevade are cases in point. A variety of +their descendants can be seen, from Java (Solo), Africa (Rhodesian +man), and about the Mediterranean and in western Europe. As the acute +cold of the last glaciation set in, the western Europeans found +themselves surrounded by water, ice, or bitter cold tundra. To vastly +over-simplify it, they “bred in” and became classic neanderthaloids. +But on Mount Carmel, the Skhul cave-find with its 70 per cent modern +features shows what could happen elsewhere at the same time. + +Lastly, from about 40,000 or 35,000 years ago--the time of the onset +of the second phase of the last glaciation--we begin to find the fully +modern skeletons of men. The modern skeletons differ from place to +place, just as different groups of men living in different places still +look different. + +What became of the Neanderthalers? Nobody can tell me for sure. I’ve a +hunch they were simply “bred out” again when the cold weather was over. +Many Americans, as the years go by, are no longer ashamed to claim they +have “Indian blood in their veins.” Give us a few more generations +and there will not be very many other Americans left to whom we can +brag about it. It certainly isn’t inconceivable to me to imagine a +little Cro-Magnon boy bragging to his friends about his tough, strong, +Neanderthaler great-great-great-great-grandfather! + + + + +Cultural BEGINNINGS + +[Illustration] + + +Men, unlike the lower animals, are made up of much more than flesh and +blood and bones; for men have “culture.” + + +WHAT IS CULTURE? + +“Culture” is a word with many meanings. The doctors speak of making a +“culture” of a certain kind of bacteria, and ants are said to have a +“culture.” Then there is the Emily Post kind of “culture”--you say a +person is “cultured,” or that he isn’t, depending on such things as +whether or not he eats peas with his knife. + +The anthropologists use the word too, and argue heatedly over its finer +meanings; but they all agree that every human being is part of or has +some kind of culture. Each particular human group has a particular +culture; that is one of the ways in which we can tell one group of +men from another. In this sense, a CULTURE means the way the members +of a group of people think and believe and live, the tools they make, +and the way they do things. Professor Robert Redfield says a culture +is an organized or formalized body of conventional understandings. +“Conventional understandings” means the whole set of rules, beliefs, +and standards which a group of people lives by. These understandings +show themselves in art, and in the other things a people may make and +do. The understandings continue to last, through tradition, from one +generation to another. They are what really characterize different +human groups. + + +SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURE + +A culture lasts, although individual men in the group die off. On +the other hand, a culture changes as the different conventions and +understandings change. You could almost say that a culture lives in the +minds of the men who have it. But people are not born with it; they +get it as they grow up. Suppose a day-old Hungarian baby is adopted by +a family in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and the child is not told that he is +Hungarian. He will grow up with no more idea of Hungarian culture than +anyone else in Oshkosh. + +So when I speak of ancient Egyptian culture, I mean the whole body +of understandings and beliefs and knowledge possessed by the ancient +Egyptians. I mean their beliefs as to why grain grew, as well as their +ability to make tools with which to reap the grain. I mean their +beliefs about life after death. What I am thinking about as culture is +a thing which lasted in time. If any one Egyptian, even the Pharaoh, +died, it didn’t affect the Egyptian culture of that particular moment. + + +PREHISTORIC CULTURES + +For that long period of man’s history that is all prehistory, we have +no written descriptions of cultures. We find only the tools men made, +the places where they lived, the graves in which they buried their +dead. Fortunately for us, these tools and living places and graves all +tell us something about the ways these men lived and the things they +believed. But the story we learn of the very early cultures must be +only a very small part of the whole, for we find so few things. The +rest of the story is gone forever. We have to do what we can with what +we find. + +For all of the time up to about 75,000 years ago, which was the time +of the classic European Neanderthal group of men, we have found few +cave-dwelling places of very early prehistoric men. First, there is the +fallen-in cave where Peking man was found, near Peking. Then there are +two or three other _early_, but not _very early_, possibilities. The +finds at the base of the French cave of Fontéchevade, those in one of +the Makapan caves in South Africa, and several open sites such as Dr. +L. S. B. Leakey’s Olorgesailie in Kenya doubtless all lie earlier than +the time of the main European Neanderthal group, but none are so early +as the Peking finds. + +You can see that we know very little about the home life of earlier +prehistoric men. We find different kinds of early stone tools, but we +can’t even be really sure which tools may have been used together. + + +WHY LITTLE HAS LASTED FROM EARLY TIMES + +Except for the rare find-spots mentioned above, all our very early +finds come from geological deposits, or from the wind-blown surfaces +of deserts. Here is what the business of geological deposits really +means. Let us say that a group of people was living in England about +300,000 years ago. They made the tools they needed, lived in some sort +of camp, almost certainly built fires, and perhaps buried their dead. +While the climate was still warm, many generations may have lived in +the same place, hunting, and gathering nuts and berries; but after some +few thousand years, the weather began very gradually to grow colder. +These early Englishmen would not have known that a glacier was forming +over northern Europe. They would only have noticed that the animals +they hunted seemed to be moving south, and that the berries grew larger +toward the south. So they would have moved south, too. + +The camp site they left is the place we archeologists would really have +liked to find. All of the different tools the people used would have +been there together--many broken, some whole. The graves, and traces +of fire, and the tools would have been there. But the glacier got +there first! The front of this enormous sheet of ice moved down over +the country, crushing and breaking and plowing up everything, like a +gigantic bulldozer. You can see what happened to our camp site. + +Everything the glacier couldn’t break, it pushed along in front of it +or plowed beneath it. Rocks were ground to gravel, and soil was caught +into the ice, which afterwards melted and ran off as muddy water. Hard +tools of flint sometimes remained whole. Human bones weren’t so hard; +it’s a wonder _any_ of them lasted. Gushing streams of melt water +flushed out the debris from underneath the glacier, and water flowed +off the surface and through great crevasses. The hard materials these +waters carried were even more rolled and ground up. Finally, such +materials were dropped by the rushing waters as gravels, miles from +the front of the glacier. At last the glacier reached its greatest +extent; then it melted backward toward the north. Debris held in the +ice was dropped where the ice melted, or was flushed off by more melt +water. When the glacier, leaving the land, had withdrawn to the sea, +great hunks of ice were broken off as icebergs. These icebergs probably +dropped the materials held in their ice wherever they floated and +melted. There must be many tools and fragmentary bones of prehistoric +men on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea. + +Remember, too, that these glaciers came and went at least three or four +times during the Ice Age. Then you will realize why the earlier things +we find are all mixed up. Stone tools from one camp site got mixed up +with stone tools from many other camp sites--tools which may have been +made tens of thousands or more years apart. The glaciers mixed them +all up, and so we cannot say which particular sets of tools belonged +together in the first place. + + +“EOLITHS” + +But what sort of tools do we find earliest? For almost a century, +people have been picking up odd bits of flint and other stone in the +oldest Ice Age gravels in England and France. It is now thought these +odd bits of stone weren’t actually worked by prehistoric men. The +stones were given a name, _eoliths_, or “dawn stones.” You can see them +in many museums; but you can be pretty sure that very few of them were +actually fashioned by men. + +It is impossible to pick out “eoliths” that seem to be made in any +one _tradition_. By “tradition” I mean a set of habits for making one +kind of tool for some particular job. No two “eoliths” look very much +alike: tools made as part of some one tradition all look much alike. +Now it’s easy to suppose that the very earliest prehistoric men picked +up and used almost any sort of stone. This wouldn’t be surprising; you +and I do it when we go camping. In other words, some of these “eoliths” +may actually have been used by prehistoric men. They must have used +anything that might be handy when they needed it. We could have figured +that out without the “eoliths.” + + +THE ROAD TO STANDARDIZATION + +Reasoning from what we know or can easily imagine, there should have +been three major steps in the prehistory of tool-making. The first step +would have been simple _utilization_ of what was at hand. This is the +step into which the “eoliths” would fall. The second step would have +been _fashioning_--the haphazard preparation of a tool when there was a +need for it. Probably many of the earlier pebble tools, which I shall +describe next, fall into this group. The third step would have been +_standardization_. Here, men began to make tools according to certain +set traditions. Counting the better-made pebble tools, there are four +such traditions or sets of habits for the production of stone tools in +earliest prehistoric times. Toward the end of the Pleistocene, a fifth +tradition appears. + + +PEBBLE TOOLS + +At the beginning of the last chapter, you’ll remember that I said there +were tools from very early geological beds. The earliest bones of men +have not yet been found in such early beds although the Sterkfontein +australopithecine cave approaches this early date. The earliest tools +come from Africa. They date back to the time of the first great +alpine glaciation and are at least 500,000 years old. The earliest +ones are made of split pebbles, about the size of your fist or a bit +bigger. They go under the name of pebble tools. There are many natural +exposures of early Pleistocene geological beds in Africa, and the +prehistoric archeologists of south and central Africa have concentrated +on searching for early tools. Other finds of early pebble tools have +recently been made in Algeria and Morocco. + +[Illustration: SOUTH AFRICAN PEBBLE TOOL] + +There are probably early pebble tools to be found in areas of the +Old World besides Africa; in fact, some prehistorians already claim +to have identified a few. Since the forms and the distinct ways of +making the earlier pebble tools had not yet sufficiently jelled into +a set tradition, they are difficult for us to recognize. It is not +so difficult, however, if there are great numbers of “possibles” +available. A little later in time the tradition becomes more clearly +set, and pebble tools are easier to recognize. So far, really large +collections of pebble tools have only been found and examined in Africa. + + +CORE-BIFACE TOOLS + +The next tradition we’ll look at is the _core_ or biface one. The tools +are large pear-shaped pieces of stone trimmed flat on the two opposite +sides or “faces.” Hence “biface” has been used to describe these tools. +The front view is like that of a pear with a rather pointed top, and +the back view looks almost exactly the same. Look at them side on, and +you can see that the front and back faces are the same and have been +trimmed to a thin tip. The real purpose in trimming down the two faces +was to get a good cutting edge all around. You can see all this in the +illustration. + +[Illustration: ABBEVILLIAN BIFACE] + +We have very little idea of the way in which these core-bifaces were +used. They have been called “hand axes,” but this probably gives the +wrong idea, for an ax, to us, is not a pointed tool. All of these early +tools must have been used for a number of jobs--chopping, scraping, +cutting, hitting, picking, and prying. Since the core-bifaces tend to +be pointed, it seems likely that they were used for hitting, picking, +and prying. But they have rough cutting edges, so they could have been +used for chopping, scraping, and cutting. + + +FLAKE TOOLS + +The third tradition is the _flake_ tradition. The idea was to get a +tool with a good cutting edge by simply knocking a nice large flake off +a big block of stone. You had to break off the flake in such a way that +it was broad and thin, and also had a good sharp cutting edge. Once you +really got on to the trick of doing it, this was probably a simpler way +to make a good cutting tool than preparing a biface. You have to know +how, though; I’ve tried it and have mashed my fingers more than once. + +The flake tools look as if they were meant mainly for chopping, +scraping, and cutting jobs. When one made a flake tool, the idea seems +to have been to produce a broad, sharp, cutting edge. + +[Illustration: CLACTONIAN FLAKE] + +The core-biface and the flake traditions were spread, from earliest +times, over much of Europe, Africa, and western Asia. The map on page +52 shows the general area. Over much of this great region there was +flint. Both of these traditions seem well adapted to flint, although +good core-bifaces and flakes were made from other kinds of stone, +especially in Africa south of the Sahara. + + +CHOPPERS AND ADZE-LIKE TOOLS + +The fourth early tradition is found in southern and eastern Asia, from +northwestern India through Java and Burma into China. Father Maringer +recently reported an early group of tools in Japan, which most resemble +those of Java, called Patjitanian. The prehistoric men in this general +area mostly used quartz and tuff and even petrified wood for their +stone tools (see illustration, p. 46). + +This fourth early tradition is called the _chopper-chopping tool_ +tradition. It probably has its earliest roots in the pebble tool +tradition of African type. There are several kinds of tools in this +tradition, but all differ from the western core-bifaces and flakes. +There are broad, heavy scrapers or cleavers, and tools with an +adze-like cutting edge. These last-named tools are called “hand adzes,” +just as the core-bifaces of the west have often been called “hand +axes.” The section of an adze cutting edge is ? shaped; the section of +an ax is < shaped. + +[Illustration: ANYATHIAN ADZE-LIKE TOOL] + +There are also pointed pebble tools. Thus the tool kit of these early +south and east Asiatic peoples seems to have included tools for doing +as many different jobs as did the tools of the Western traditions. + +Dr. H. L. Movius has emphasized that the tools which were found in the +Peking cave with Peking man belong to the chopper-tool tradition. This +is the only case as yet where the tools and the man have been found +together from very earliest times--if we except Sterkfontein. + + +DIFFERENCES WITHIN THE TOOL-MAKING TRADITIONS + +The latter three great traditions in the manufacture of stone +tools--and the less clear-cut pebble tools before them--are all we have +to show of the cultures of the men of those times. Changes happened in +each of the traditions. As time went on, the tools in each tradition +were better made. There could also be slight regional differences in +the tools within one tradition. Thus, tools with small differences, but +all belonging to one tradition, can be given special group (facies) +names. + +This naming of special groups has been going on for some time. Here are +some of these names, since you may see them used in museum displays +of flint tools, or in books. Within each tradition of tool-making +(save the chopper tools), the earliest tool type is at the bottom +of the list, just as it appears in the lowest beds of a geological +stratification.[3] + + [3] Archeologists usually make their charts and lists with the + earliest materials at the bottom and the latest on top, since + this is the way they find them in the ground. + + Chopper tool (all about equally early): + Anyathian (Burma) + Choukoutienian (China) + Patjitanian (Java) + Soan (India) + + Flake: + “Typical Mousterian” + Levalloiso-Mousterian + Levalloisian + Tayacian + Clactonian (localized in England) + + Core-biface: + Some blended elements in “Mousterian” + Micoquian (= Acheulean 6 and 7) + Acheulean + Abbevillian (once called “Chellean”) + + Pebble tool: + Oldowan + Ain Hanech + pre-Stellenbosch + Kafuan + +The core-biface and the flake traditions appear in the chart (p. 65). + +The early archeologists had many of the tool groups named before they +ever realized that there were broader tool preparation traditions. This +was understandable, for in dealing with the mixture of things that come +out of glacial gravels the easiest thing to do first is to isolate +individual types of tools into groups. First you put a bushel-basketful +of tools on a table and begin matching up types. Then you give names to +the groups of each type. The groups and the types are really matters of +the archeologists’ choice; in real life, they were probably less exact +than the archeologists’ lists of them. We now know pretty well in which +of the early traditions the various early groups belong. + + +THE MEANING OF THE DIFFERENT TRADITIONS + +What do the traditions really mean? I see them as the standardization +of ways to make tools for particular jobs. We may not know exactly what +job the maker of a particular core-biface or flake tool had in mind. We +can easily see, however, that he already enjoyed a know-how, a set of +persistent habits of tool preparation, which would always give him the +same type of tool when he wanted to make it. Therefore, the traditions +show us that persistent habits already existed for the preparation of +one type of tool or another. + +This tells us that one of the characteristic aspects of human culture +was already present. There must have been, in the minds of these +early men, a notion of the ideal type of tool for a particular job. +Furthermore, since we find so many thousands upon thousands of tools +of one type or another, the notion of the ideal types of tools _and_ +the know-how for the making of each type must have been held in common +by many men. The notions of the ideal types and the know-how for their +production must have been passed on from one generation to another. + +I could even guess that the notions of the ideal type of one or the +other of these tools stood out in the minds of men of those times +somewhat like a symbol of “perfect tool for good job.” If this were +so--remember it’s only a wild guess of mine--then men were already +symbol users. Now let’s go on a further step to the fact that the words +men speak are simply sounds, each different sound being a symbol for a +different meaning. If standardized tool-making suggests symbol-making, +is it also possible that crude word-symbols were also being made? I +suppose that it is not impossible. + +There may, of course, be a real question whether tool-utilizing +creatures--our first step, on page 42--were actually men. Other +animals utilize things at hand as tools. The tool-fashioning creature +of our second step is more suggestive, although we may not yet feel +sure that many of the earlier pebble tools were man-made products. But +with the step to standardization and the appearance of the traditions, +I believe we must surely be dealing with the traces of culture-bearing +_men_. The “conventional understandings” which Professor Redfield’s +definition of culture suggests are now evidenced for us in the +persistent habits for the preparation of stone tools. Were we able to +see the other things these prehistoric men must have made--in materials +no longer preserved for the archeologist to find--I believe there would +be clear signs of further conventional understandings. The men may have +been physically primitive and pretty shaggy in appearance, but I think +we must surely call them men. + + +AN OLDER INTERPRETATION OF THE WESTERN TRADITIONS + +In the last chapter, I told you that many of the older archeologists +and human paleontologists used to think that modern man was very old. +The supposed ages of Piltdown and Galley Hill were given as evidence +of the great age of anatomically modern man, and some interpretations +of the Swanscombe and Fontéchevade fossils were taken to support +this view. The conclusion was that there were two parallel lines or +“phyla” of men already present well back in the Pleistocene. The +first of these, the more primitive or “paleoanthropic” line, was +said to include Heidelberg, the proto-neanderthaloids and classic +Neanderthal. The more anatomically modern or “neanthropic” line was +thought to consist of Piltdown and the others mentioned above. The +Neanderthaler or paleoanthropic line was thought to have become extinct +after the first phase of the last great glaciation. Of course, the +modern or neanthropic line was believed to have persisted into the +present, as the basis for the world’s population today. But with +Piltdown liquidated, Galley Hill known to be very late, and Swanscombe +and Fontéchevade otherwise interpreted, there is little left of the +so-called parallel phyla theory. + +While the theory was in vogue, however, and as long as the European +archeological evidence was looked at in one short-sighted way, the +archeological materials _seemed_ to fit the parallel phyla theory. It +was simply necessary to believe that the flake tools were made only +by the paleoanthropic Neanderthaler line, and that the more handsome +core-biface tools were the product of the neanthropic modern-man line. + +Remember that _almost_ all of the early prehistoric European tools +came only from the redeposited gravel beds. This means that the tools +were not normally found in the remains of camp sites or work shops +where they had actually been dropped by the men who made and used +them. The tools came, rather, from the secondary hodge-podge of the +glacial gravels. I tried to give you a picture of the bulldozing action +of glaciers (p. 40) and of the erosion and weathering that were +side-effects of a glacially conditioned climate on the earth’s surface. +As we said above, if one simply plucks tools out of the redeposited +gravels, his natural tendency is to “type” the tools by groups, and to +think that the groups stand for something _on their own_. + +In 1906, M. Victor Commont actually made a rare find of what seems +to have been a kind of workshop site, on a terrace above the Somme +river in France. Here, Commont realized, flake tools appeared clearly +in direct association with core-biface tools. Few prehistorians paid +attention to Commont or his site, however. It was easier to believe +that flake tools represented a distinct “culture” and that this +“culture” was that of the Neanderthaler or paleoanthropic line, and +that the core-bifaces stood for another “culture” which was that of the +supposed early modern or neanthropic line. Of course, I am obviously +skipping many details here. Some later sites with Neanderthal fossils +do seem to have only flake tools, but other such sites have both types +of tools. The flake tools which appeared _with_ the core-bifaces +in the Swanscombe gravels were never made much of, although it +was embarrassing for the parallel phyla people that Fontéchevade +ran heavily to flake tools. All in all, the parallel phyla theory +flourished because it seemed so neat and easy to understand. + + +TRADITIONS ARE TOOL-MAKING HABITS, NOT CULTURES + +In case you think I simply enjoy beating a dead horse, look in any +standard book on prehistory written twenty (or even ten) years ago, or +in most encyclopedias. You’ll find that each of the individual tool +types, of the West, at least, was supposed to represent a “culture.” +The “cultures” were believed to correspond to parallel lines of human +evolution. + +In 1937, Mr. Harper Kelley strongly re-emphasized the importance +of Commont’s workshop site and the presence of flake tools with +core-bifaces. Next followed Dr. Movius’ clear delineation of the +chopper-chopping tool tradition of the Far East. This spoiled the nice +symmetry of the flake-tool = paleoanthropic, core-biface = neanthropic +equations. Then came increasing understanding of the importance of +the pebble tools in Africa, and the location of several more workshop +sites there, especially at Olorgesailie in Kenya. Finally came the +liquidation of Piltdown and the deflation of Galley Hill’s date. So it +is at last possible to picture an individual prehistoric man making a +flake tool to do one job and a core-biface tool to do another. Commont +showed us this picture in 1906, but few believed him. + +[Illustration: DISTRIBUTION OF TOOL-PREPARATION TRADITIONS + +Time approximately 100,000 years ago] + +There are certainly a few cases in which flake tools did appear with +few or no core-bifaces. The flake-tool group called Clactonian in +England is such a case. Another good, but certainly later case is +that of the cave on Mount Carmel in Palestine, where the blended +pre-neanderthaloid, 70 per cent modern-type skulls were found. Here, in +the same level with the skulls, were 9,784 flint tools. Of these, only +three--doubtless strays--were core-bifaces; all the rest were flake +tools or flake chips. We noted above how the Fontéchevade cave ran to +flake tools. The only conclusion I would draw from this is that times +and circumstances did exist in which prehistoric men needed only flake +tools. So they only made flake tools for those particular times and +circumstances. + + +LIFE IN EARLIEST TIMES + +What do we actually know of life in these earliest times? In the +glacial gravels, or in the terrace gravels of rivers once swollen by +floods of melt water or heavy rains, or on the windswept deserts, we +find stone tools. The earliest and coarsest of these are the pebble +tools. We do not yet know what the men who made them looked like, +although the Sterkfontein australopithecines probably give us a good +hint. Then begin the more formal tool preparation traditions of the +west--the core-bifaces and the flake tools--and the chopper-chopping +tool series of the farther east. There is an occasional roughly worked +piece of bone. From the gravels which yield the Clactonian flakes of +England comes the fire-hardened point of a wooden spear. There are +also the chance finds of the fossil human bones themselves, of which +we spoke in the last chapter. Aside from the cave of Peking man, none +of the earliest tools have been found in caves. Open air or “workshop” +sites which do not seem to have been disturbed later by some geological +agency are very rare. + +The chart on page 65 shows graphically what the situation in +west-central Europe seems to have been. It is not yet certain whether +there were pebble tools there or not. The Fontéchevade cave comes +into the picture about 100,000 years ago or more. But for the earlier +hundreds of thousands of years--below the red-dotted line on the +chart--the tools we find come almost entirely from the haphazard +mixture within the geological contexts. + +The stone tools of each of the earlier traditions are the simplest +kinds of all-purpose tools. Almost any one of them could be used for +hacking, chopping, cutting, and scraping; so the men who used them must +have been living in a rough and ready sort of way. They found or hunted +their food wherever they could. In the anthropological jargon, they +were “food-gatherers,” pure and simple. + +Because of the mixture in the gravels and in the materials they +carried, we can’t be sure which animals these men hunted. Bones of +the larger animals turn up in the gravels, but they could just as +well belong to the animals who hunted the men, rather than the other +way about. We don’t know. This is why camp sites like Commont’s and +Olorgesailie in Kenya are so important when we do find them. The animal +bones at Olorgesailie belonged to various mammals of extremely large +size. Probably they were taken in pit-traps, but there are a number of +groups of three round stones on the site which suggest that the people +used bolas. The South American Indians used three-ball bolas, with the +stones in separate leather bags connected by thongs. These were whirled +and then thrown through the air so as to entangle the feet of a fleeing +animal. + +Professor F. Clark Howell recently returned from excavating another +important open air site at Isimila in Tanganyika. The site yielded +the bones of many fossil animals and also thousands of core-bifaces, +flakes, and choppers. But Howell’s reconstruction of the food-getting +habits of the Isimila people certainly suggests that the word “hunting” +is too dignified for what they did; “scavenging” would be much nearer +the mark. + +During a great part of this time the climate was warm and pleasant. The +second interglacial period (the time between the second and third great +alpine glaciations) lasted a long time, and during much of this time +the climate may have been even better than ours is now. We don’t know +that earlier prehistoric men in Europe or Africa lived in caves. They +may not have needed to; much of the weather may have been so nice that +they lived in the open. Perhaps they didn’t wear clothes, either. + + +WHAT THE PEKING CAVE-FINDS TELL US + +The one early cave-dwelling we have found is that of Peking man, in +China. Peking man had fire. He probably cooked his meat, or used +the fire to keep dangerous animals away from his den. In the cave +were bones of dangerous animals, members of the wolf, bear, and cat +families. Some of the cat bones belonged to beasts larger than tigers. +There were also bones of other wild animals: buffalo, camel, deer, +elephants, horses, sheep, and even ostriches. Seventy per cent of the +animals Peking man killed were fallow deer. It’s much too cold and dry +in north China for all these animals to live there today. So this list +helps us know that the weather was reasonably warm, and that there was +enough rain to grow grass for the grazing animals. The list also helps +the paleontologists to date the find. + +Peking man also seems to have eaten plant food, for there are hackberry +seeds in the debris of the cave. His tools were made of sandstone and +quartz and sometimes of a rather bad flint. As we’ve already seen, they +belong in the chopper-tool tradition. It seems fairly clear that some +of the edges were chipped by right-handed people. There are also many +split pieces of heavy bone. Peking man probably split them so he could +eat the bone marrow, but he may have used some of them as tools. + +Many of these split bones were the bones of Peking men. Each one of the +skulls had already had the base broken out of it. In no case were any +of the bones resting together in their natural relation to one another. +There is nothing like a burial; all of the bones are scattered. Now +it’s true that animals could have scattered bodies that were not cared +for or buried. But splitting bones lengthwise and carefully removing +the base of a skull call for both the tools and the people to use them. +It’s pretty clear who the people were. Peking man was a cannibal. + + * * * * * + +This rounds out about all we can say of the life and times of early +prehistoric men. In those days life was rough. You evidently had to +watch out not only for dangerous animals but also for your fellow men. +You ate whatever you could catch or find growing. But you had sense +enough to build fires, and you had already formed certain habits for +making the kinds of stone tools you needed. That’s about all we know. +But I think we’ll have to admit that cultural beginnings had been made, +and that these early people were really _men_. + + + + +MORE EVIDENCE of Culture + +[Illustration] + + +While the dating is not yet sure, the material that we get from caves +in Europe must go back to about 100,000 years ago; the time of the +classic Neanderthal group followed soon afterwards. We don’t know why +there is no earlier material in the caves; apparently they were not +used before the last interglacial phase (the period just before the +last great glaciation). We know that men of the classic Neanderthal +group were living in caves from about 75,000 to 45,000 years ago. +New radioactive carbon dates even suggest that some of the traces of +culture we’ll describe in this chapter may have lasted to about 35,000 +years ago. Probably some of the pre-neanderthaloid types of men had +also lived in caves. But we have so far found their bones in caves only +in Palestine and at Fontéchevade. + + +THE CAVE LAYERS + +In parts of France, some peasants still live in caves. In prehistoric +time, many generations of people lived in them. As a result, many +caves have deep layers of debris. The first people moved in and lived +on the rock floor. They threw on the floor whatever they didn’t want, +and they tracked in mud; nobody bothered to clean house in those days. +Their debris--junk and mud and garbage and what not--became packed +into a layer. As time went on, and generations passed, the layer grew +thicker. Then there might have been a break in the occupation of the +cave for a while. Perhaps the game animals got scarce and the people +moved away; or maybe the cave became flooded. Later on, other people +moved in and began making a new layer of their own on top of the first +layer. Perhaps this process of layering went on in the same cave for a +hundred thousand years; you can see what happened. The drawing on this +page shows a section through such a cave. The earliest layer is on the +bottom, the latest one on top. They go in order from bottom to top, +earliest to latest. This is the _stratification_ we talked about (p. +12). + +[Illustration: SECTION OF SHELTER ON LOWER TERRACE, LE MOUSTIER] + +While we may find a mix-up in caves, it’s not nearly as bad as the +mixing up that was done by glaciers. The animal bones and shells, the +fireplaces, the bones of men, and the tools the men made all belong +together, if they come from one layer. That’s the reason why the cave +of Peking man is so important. It is also the reason why the caves in +Europe and the Near East are so important. We can get an idea of which +things belong together and which lot came earliest and which latest. + +In most cases, prehistoric men lived only in the mouths of caves. +They didn’t like the dark inner chambers as places to live in. They +preferred rock-shelters, at the bases of overhanging cliffs, if there +was enough overhang to give shelter. When the weather was good, they no +doubt lived in the open air as well. I’ll go on using the term “cave” +since it’s more familiar, but remember that I really mean rock-shelter, +as a place in which people actually lived. + +The most important European cave sites are in Spain, France, and +central Europe; there are also sites in England and Italy. A few caves +are known in the Near East and Africa, and no doubt more sites will be +found when the out-of-the-way parts of Europe, Africa, and Asia are +studied. + + +AN “INDUSTRY” DEFINED + +We have already seen that the earliest European cave materials are +those from the cave of Fontéchevade. Movius feels certain that the +lowest materials here date back well into the third interglacial stage, +that which lay between the Riss (next to the last) and the Würm I +(first stage of the last) alpine glaciations. This material consists +of an _industry_ of stone tools, apparently all made in the flake +tradition. This is the first time we have used the word “industry.” +It is useful to call all of the different tools found together in one +layer and made of _one kind of material_ an industry; that is, the +tools must be found together as men left them. Tools taken from the +glacial gravels (or from windswept desert surfaces or river gravels +or any geological deposit) are not “together” in this sense. We might +say the latter have only “geological,” not “archeological” context. +Archeological context means finding things just as men left them. We +can tell what tools go together in an “industrial” sense only if we +have archeological context. + +Up to now, the only things we could have called “industries” were the +worked stone industry and perhaps the worked (?) bone industry of the +Peking cave. We could add some of the very clear cases of open air +sites, like Olorgesailie. We couldn’t use the term for the stone tools +from the glacial gravels, because we do not know which tools belonged +together. But when the cave materials begin to appear in Europe, we can +begin to speak of industries. Most of the European caves of this time +contain industries of flint tools alone. + + +THE EARLIEST EUROPEAN CAVE LAYERS + +We’ve just mentioned the industry from what is said to be the oldest +inhabited cave in Europe; that is, the industry from the deepest layer +of the site at Fontéchevade. Apparently it doesn’t amount to much. The +tools are made of stone, in the flake tradition, and are very poorly +worked. This industry is called _Tayacian_. Its type tool seems to be +a smallish flake tool, but there are also larger flakes which seem to +have been fashioned for hacking. In fact, the type tool seems to be +simply a smaller edition of the Clactonian tool (pictured on p. 45). + +None of the Fontéchevade tools are really good. There are scrapers, +and more or less pointed tools, and tools that may have been used +for hacking and chopping. Many of the tools from the earlier glacial +gravels are better made than those of this first industry we see in +a European cave. There is so little of this material available that +we do not know which is really typical and which is not. You would +probably find it hard to see much difference between this industry and +a collection of tools of the type called Clactonian, taken from the +glacial gravels, especially if the Clactonian tools were small-sized. + +The stone industry of the bottommost layer of the Mount Carmel cave, +in Palestine, where somewhat similar tools were found, has also been +called Tayacian. + +I shall have to bring in many unfamiliar words for the names of the +industries. The industries are usually named after the places where +they were first found, and since these were in most cases in France, +most of the names which follow will be of French origin. However, +the names have simply become handles and are in use far beyond the +boundaries of France. It would be better if we had a non-place-name +terminology, but archeologists have not yet been able to agree on such +a terminology. + + +THE ACHEULEAN INDUSTRY + +Both in France and in Palestine, as well as in some African cave +sites, the next layers in the deep caves have an industry in both the +core-biface and the flake traditions. The core-biface tools usually +make up less than half of all the tools in the industry. However, +the name of the biface type of tool is generally given to the whole +industry. It is called the _Acheulean_, actually a late form of it, as +“Acheulean” is also used for earlier core-biface tools taken from the +glacial gravels. In western Europe, the name used is _Upper Acheulean_ +or _Micoquian_. The same terms have been borrowed to name layers E and +F in the Tabun cave, on Mount Carmel in Palestine. + +The Acheulean core-biface type of tool is worked on two faces so as +to give a cutting edge all around. The outline of its front view may +be oval, or egg-shaped, or a quite pointed pear shape. The large +chip-scars of the Acheulean core-bifaces are shallow and flat. It is +suspected that this resulted from the removal of the chips with a +wooden club; the deep chip-scars of the earlier Abbevillian core-biface +came from beating the tool against a stone anvil. These tools are +really the best and also the final products of the core-biface +tradition. We first noticed the tradition in the early glacial gravels +(p. 43); now we see its end, but also its finest examples, in the +deeper cave levels. + +The flake tools, which really make up the greater bulk of this +industry, are simple scrapers and chips with sharp cutting edges. The +habits used to prepare them must have been pretty much the same as +those used for at least one of the flake industries we shall mention +presently. + +There is very little else in these early cave layers. We do not have +a proper “industry” of bone tools. There are traces of fire, and of +animal bones, and a few shells. In Palestine, there are many more +bones of deer than of gazelle in these layers; the deer lives in a +wetter climate than does the gazelle. In the European cave layers, the +animal bones are those of beasts that live in a warm climate. They +belonged in the last interglacial period. We have not yet found the +bones of fossil men definitely in place with this industry. + +[Illustration: ACHEULEAN BIFACE] + + +FLAKE INDUSTRIES FROM THE CAVES + +Two more stone industries--the _Levalloisian_ and the +“_Mousterian_”--turn up at approximately the same time in the European +cave layers. Their tools seem to be mainly in the flake tradition, +but according to some of the authorities their preparation also shows +some combination with the habits by which the core-biface tools were +prepared. + +Now notice that I don’t tell you the Levalloisian and the “Mousterian” +layers are both above the late Acheulean layers. Look at the cave +section (p. 57) and you’ll find that some “Mousterian of Acheulean +tradition” appears above some “typical Mousterian.” This means that +there may be some kinds of Acheulean industries that are later than +some kinds of “Mousterian.” The same is true of the Levalloisian. + +There were now several different kinds of habits that men used in +making stone tools. These habits were based on either one or the other +of the two traditions--core-biface or flake--or on combinations of +the habits used in the preparation techniques of both traditions. All +were popular at about the same time. So we find that people who made +one kind of stone tool industry lived in a cave for a while. Then they +gave up the cave for some reason, and people with another industry +moved in. Then the first people came back--or at least somebody with +the same tool-making habits as the first people. Or maybe a third group +of tool-makers moved in. The people who had these different habits for +making their stone tools seem to have moved around a good deal. They no +doubt borrowed and exchanged tricks of the trade with each other. There +were no patent laws in those days. + +The extremely complicated interrelationships of the different habits +used by the tool-makers of this range of time are at last being +systematically studied. M. François Bordes has developed a statistical +method of great importance for understanding these tool preparation +habits. + + +THE LEVALLOISIAN AND MOUSTERIAN + +The easiest Levalloisian tool to spot is a big flake tool. The trick +in making it was to fashion carefully a big chunk of stone (called +the Levalloisian “tortoise core,” because it resembles the shape of +a turtle-shell) and then to whack this in such a way that a large +flake flew off. This large thin flake, with sharp cutting edges, is +the finished Levalloisian tool. There were various other tools in a +Levalloisian industry, but this is the characteristic _Levalloisian_ +tool. + +There are several “typical Mousterian” stone tools. Different from +the tools of the Levalloisian type, these were made from “disc-like +cores.” There are medium-sized flake “side scrapers.” There are also +some small pointed tools and some small “hand axes.” The last of these +tool types is often a flake worked on both of the flat sides (that +is, bifacially). There are also pieces of flint worked into the form +of crude balls. The pointed tools may have been fixed on shafts to +make short jabbing spears; the round flint balls may have been used as +bolas. Actually, we don’t _know_ what either tool was used for. The +points and side scrapers are illustrated (pp. 64 and 66). + +[Illustration: LEVALLOIS FLAKE] + + +THE MIXING OF TRADITIONS + +Nowadays the archeologists are less and less sure of the importance +of any one specific tool type and name. Twenty years ago, they used +to speak simply of Acheulean or Levalloisian or Mousterian tools. +Now, more and more, _all_ of the tools from some one layer in a +cave are called an “industry,” which is given a mixed name. Thus we +have “Levalloiso-Mousterian,” and “Acheuleo-Levalloisian,” and even +“Acheuleo-Mousterian” (or “Mousterian of Acheulean tradition”). Bordes’ +systematic work is beginning to clear up some of our confusion. + +The time of these late Acheuleo-Levalloiso-Mousterioid industries +is from perhaps as early as 100,000 years ago. It may have lasted +until well past 50,000 years ago. This was the time of the first +phase of the last great glaciation. It was also the time that the +classic group of Neanderthal men was living in Europe. A number of +the Neanderthal fossil finds come from these cave layers. Before the +different habits of tool preparation were understood it used to be +popular to say Neanderthal man was “Mousterian man.” I think this is +wrong. What used to be called “Mousterian” is now known to be a variety +of industries with tools of both core-biface and flake habits, and +so mixed that the word “Mousterian” used alone really doesn’t mean +anything. The Neanderthalers doubtless understood the tool preparation +habits by means of which Acheulean, Levalloisian and Mousterian type +tools were produced. We also have the more modern-like Mount Carmel +people, found in a cave layer of Palestine with tools almost entirely +in the flake tradition, called “Levalloiso-Mousterian,” and the +Fontéchevade-Tayacian (p. 59). + +[Illustration: MOUSTERIAN POINT] + + +OTHER SUGGESTIONS OF LIFE IN THE EARLY CAVE LAYERS + +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. +Thus, the meat diet must have been changing, as the glacier crept +farther south. Shells and possibly fish bones have lasted in these +cave layers, but there is not a trace of the vegetable foods and the +nuts and berries and other wild fruits that must have been eaten when +they could be found. + +[Illustration: CHART SHOWING PRESENT UNDERSTANDING OF RELATIONSHIPS AND +SUCCESSION OF TOOL-PREPARATION TRADITIONS, INDUSTRIES, AND ASSEMBLAGES +OF WEST-CENTRAL EUROPE + +Wavy lines indicate transitions in industrial habits. These transitions +are not yet understood in detail. The glacial and climatic scheme shown +is the alpine one.] + +Bone tools have also been found from this period. Some are called +scrapers, and there are also long chisel-like leg-bone fragments +believed to have been used for skinning animals. Larger hunks of bone, +which seem to have served as anvils or chopping blocks, are fairly +common. + +Bits of mineral, used as coloring matter, have also been found. We +don’t know what the color was used for. + +[Illustration: MOUSTERIAN SIDE SCRAPER] + +There is a small but certain number of cases of intentional burials. +These burials have been found on the floors of the caves; in other +words, the people dug graves in the places where they lived. The holes +made for the graves were small. For this reason (or perhaps for some +other?) the bodies were in a curled-up or contracted position. Flint or +bone tools or pieces of meat seem to have been put in with some of the +bodies. In several cases, flat stones had been laid over the graves. + + +TOOLS FROM AFRICA AND ASIA ABOUT 100,000 YEARS AGO + +Professor Movius characterizes early prehistoric Africa as a continent +showing a variety of stone industries. Some of these industries were +purely local developments and some were practically identical with +industries found in Europe at the same time. From northwest Africa +to Capetown--excepting the tropical rain forest region of the west +center--tools of developed Acheulean, Levalloisian, and Mousterian +types have been recognized. Often they are named after African place +names. + +In east and south Africa lived people whose industries show a +development of the Levalloisian technique. Such industries are +called Stillbay. Another industry, developed on the basis of the +Acheulean technique, is called Fauresmith. From the northwest comes +an industry with tanged points and flake-blades; this is called the +Aterian. The tropical rain forest region contained people whose stone +tools apparently show adjustment to this peculiar environment; the +so-called Sangoan industry includes stone picks, adzes, core-bifaces +of specialized Acheulean type, and bifacial points which were probably +spearheads. + +In western Asia, even as far as the east coast of India, the tools of +the Eurafrican core-biface and flake tool traditions continued to be +used. But in the Far East, as we noted in the last chapter, men had +developed characteristic stone chopper and chopping tools. This tool +preparation tradition--basically a pebble tool tradition--lasted to the +very end of the Ice Age. + +When more intact open air sites such as that of an earlier time at +Olorgesailie, and more stratified cave sites are found and excavated +in Asia and Africa, we shall be able to get a more complete picture. +So far, our picture of the general cultural level of the Old World at +about 100,000 years ago--and soon afterwards--is best from Europe, but +it is still far from complete there, too. + + +CULTURE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE LAST GREAT GLACIAL PERIOD + +The few things we have found must indicate only a very small part +of the total activities of the people who lived at the time. All of +the things they made of wood and bark, of skins, of anything soft, +are gone. The fact that burials were made, at least in Europe and +Palestine, is pretty clear proof that the people had some notion of a +life after death. But what this notion really was, or what gods (if +any) men believed in, we cannot know. Dr. Movius has also reminded me +of the so-called bear cults--cases in which caves have been found which +contain the skulls of bears in apparently purposeful arrangement. This +might suggest some notion of hoarding up the spirits or the strength of +bears killed in the hunt. Probably the people lived in small groups, +as hunting and food-gathering seldom provide enough food for large +groups of people. These groups probably had some kind of leader or +“chief.” Very likely the rude beginnings of rules for community life +and politics, and even law, were being made. But what these were, we +do not know. We can only guess about such things, as we can only guess +about many others; for example, how the idea of a family must have been +growing, and how there may have been witch doctors who made beginnings +in medicine or in art, in the materials they gathered for their trade. + +The stone tools help us most. They have lasted, and we can find +them. As they come to us, from this cave or that, and from this +layer or that, the tool industries show a variety of combinations +of the different basic habits or traditions of tool preparation. +This seems only natural, as the groups of people must have been very +small. The mixtures and blendings of the habits used in making stone +tools must mean that there were also mixtures and blends in many of +the other ideas and beliefs of these small groups. And what this +probably means is that there was no one _culture_ of the time. It is +certainly unlikely that there were simply three cultures, “Acheulean,” +“Levalloisian,” and “Mousterian,” as has been thought in the past. +Rather there must have been a great variety of loosely related cultures +at about the same stage of advancement. We could say, too, that here +we really begin to see, for the first time, that remarkable ability +of men to adapt themselves to a variety of conditions. We shall see +this adaptive ability even more clearly as time goes on and the record +becomes more complete. + +Over how great an area did these loosely related cultures reach in +the time 75,000 to 45,000 or even as late as 35,000 years ago? We +have described stone tools made in one or another of the flake and +core-biface habits, for an enormous area. It covers all of Europe, all +of Africa, the Near East, and parts of India. It is perfectly possible +that the flake and core-biface habits lasted on after 35,000 years ago, +in some places outside of Europe. In northern Africa, for example, we +are certain that they did (see chart, p. 72). + +On the other hand, in the Far East (China, Burma, Java) and in northern +India, the tools of the old chopper-tool tradition were still being +made. Out there, we must assume, there was a different set of loosely +related cultures. At least, there was a different set of loosely +related habits for the making of tools. But the men who made them must +have looked much like the men of the West. Their tools were different, +but just as useful. + +As to what the men of the West looked like, I’ve already hinted at all +we know so far (pp. 29 ff.). The Neanderthalers were present at +the time. Some more modern-like men must have been about, too, since +fossils of them have turned up at Mount Carmel in Palestine, and at +Teshik Tash, in Trans-caspian Russia. It is still too soon to know +whether certain combinations of tools within industries were made +only by certain physical types of men. But since tools of both the +core-biface and the flake traditions, and their blends, turn up from +South Africa to England to India, it is most unlikely that only one +type of man used only one particular habit in the preparation of tools. +What seems perfectly clear is that men in Africa and men in India were +making just as good tools as the men who lived in western Europe. + + + + +EARLY MODERNS + +[Illustration] + + +From some time during the first inter-stadial of the last great +glaciation (say some time after about 40,000 years ago), we have +more accurate dates for the European-Mediterranean area and less +accurate ones for the rest of the Old World. This is probably +because the effects of the last glaciation have been studied in the +European-Mediterranean area more than they have been elsewhere. + + +A NEW TRADITION APPEARS + +Something new was probably beginning to happen in the +European-Mediterranean area about 40,000 years ago, though all the +rest of the Old World seems to have been going on as it had been. I +can’t be sure of this because the information we are using as a basis +for dates is very inaccurate for the areas outside of Europe and the +Mediterranean. + +We can at least make a guess. In Egypt and north Africa, men were still +using the old methods of making stone tools. This was especially true +of flake tools of the Levalloisian type, save that they were growing +smaller and smaller as time went on. But at the same time, a new +tradition was becoming popular in westernmost Asia and in Europe. This +was the blade-tool tradition. + + +BLADE TOOLS + +A stone blade is really just a long parallel-sided flake, as the +drawing shows. It has sharp cutting edges, and makes a very useful +knife. The real trick is to be able to make one. It is almost +impossible to make a blade out of any stone but flint or a natural +volcanic glass called obsidian. And even if you have flint or obsidian, +you first have to work up a special cone-shaped “blade-core,” from +which to whack off blades. + +[Illustration: PLAIN BLADE] + +You whack with a hammer stone against a bone or antler punch which is +directed at the proper place on the blade-core. The blade-core has to +be well supported or gripped while this is going on. To get a good +flint blade tool takes a great deal of know-how. + +Remember that a tradition in stone tools means no more than that some +particular way of making the tools got started and lasted a long time. +Men who made some tools in one tradition or set of habits would also +make other tools for different purposes by means of another tradition +or set of habits. It was even possible for the two sets of habits to +become combined. + + +THE EARLIEST BLADE TOOLS + +The oldest blade tools we have found were deep down in the layers of +the Mount Carmel caves, in Tabun Eb and Ea. Similar tools have been +found in equally early cave levels in Syria; their popularity there +seems to fluctuate a bit. Some more or less parallel-sided flakes are +known in the Levalloisian industry in France, but they are probably +no earlier than Tabun E. The Tabun blades are part of a local late +“Acheulean” industry, which is characterized by core-biface “hand +axes,” but which has many flake tools as well. Professor F. E. +Zeuner believes that this industry may be more than 120,000 years old; +actually its date has not yet been fixed, but it is very old--older +than the fossil finds of modern-like men in the same caves. + +[Illustration: SUCCESSION OF ICE AGE FLINT TYPES, INDUSTRIES, AND +ASSEMBLAGES, AND OF FOSSIL MEN, IN NORTHWESTERN EURAFRASIA] + +For some reason, the habit of making blades in Palestine and Syria was +interrupted. Blades only reappeared there at about the same time they +were first made in Europe, some time after 45,000 years ago; that is, +after the first phase of the last glaciation was ended. + +[Illustration: BACKED BLADE] + +We are not sure just where the earliest _persisting_ habits for the +production of blade tools developed. Impressed by the very early +momentary appearance of blades at Tabun on Mount Carmel, Professor +Dorothy A. Garrod first favored the Near East as a center of origin. +She spoke of “some as yet unidentified Asiatic centre,” which she +thought might be in the highlands of Iran or just beyond. But more +recent work has been done in this area, especially by Professor Coon, +and the blade tools do not seem to have an early appearance there. When +the blade tools reappear in the Syro-Palestinian area, they do so in +industries which also include Levalloiso-Mousterian flake tools. From +the point of view of form and workmanship, the blade tools themselves +are not so fine as those which seem to be making their appearance +in western Europe about the same time. There is a characteristic +Syro-Palestinian flake point, possibly a projectile tip, called the +Emiran, which is not known from Europe. The appearance of blade tools, +together with Levalloiso-Mousterian flakes, continues even after the +Emiran point has gone out of use. + +It seems clear that the production of blade tools did not immediately +swamp the set of older habits in Europe, too; the use of flake +tools also continued there. This was not so apparent to the older +archeologists, whose attention was focused on individual tool types. It +is not, in fact, impossible--although it is certainly not proved--that +the technique developed in the preparation of the Levalloisian tortoise +core (and the striking of the Levalloisian flake from it) might have +followed through to the conical core and punch technique for the +production of blades. Professor Garrod is much impressed with the speed +of change during the later phases of the last glaciation, and its +probable consequences. She speaks of “the greater number of industries +having enough individual character to be classified as distinct ... +since evolution now starts to outstrip diffusion.” Her “evolution” here +is of course an industrial evolution rather than a biological one. +Certainly the people of Europe had begun to make blade tools during +the warm spell after the first phase of the last glaciation. By about +40,000 years ago blades were well established. The bones of the blade +tool makers we’ve found so far indicate that anatomically modern men +had now certainly appeared. Unfortunately, only a few fossil men have +so far been found from the very beginning of the blade tool range in +Europe (or elsewhere). What I certainly shall _not_ tell you is that +conquering bands of fine, strong, anatomically modern men, armed with +superior blade tools, came sweeping out of the East to exterminate the +lowly Neanderthalers. Even if we don’t know exactly what happened, I’d +lay a good bet it wasn’t that simple. + +We do know a good deal about different blade industries in Europe. +Almost all of them come from cave layers. There is a great deal of +complication in what we find. The chart (p. 72) tries to simplify +this complication; in fact, it doubtless simplifies it too much. But +it may suggest all the complication of industries which is going +on at this time. You will note that the upper portion of my much +simpler chart (p. 65) covers the same material (in the section +marked “Various Blade-Tool Industries”). That chart is certainly too +simplified. + +You will realize that all this complication comes not only from +the fact that we are finding more material. It is due also to the +increasing ability of men to adapt themselves to a great variety of +situations. Their tools indicate this adaptiveness. We know there was +a good deal of climatic change at this time. The plants and animals +that men used for food were changing, too. The great variety of tools +and industries we now find reflect these changes and the ability of men +to keep up with the times. Now, for example, is the first time we are +sure that there are tools to _make_ other tools. They also show men’s +increasing ability to adapt themselves. + + +SPECIAL TYPES OF BLADE TOOLS + +The most useful tools that appear at this time were made from blades. + + 1. The “backed” blade. This is a knife made of a flint blade, with + one edge purposely blunted, probably to save the user’s fingers + from being cut. There are several shapes of backed blades (p. + 73). + + [Illustration: TWO BURINS] + + 2. The _burin_ or “graver.” The burin was the original chisel. Its + cutting edge is _transverse_, like a chisel’s. Some burins are + made like a screw-driver, save that burins are sharp. Others have + edges more like the blade of a chisel or a push plane, with + only one bevel. Burins were probably used to make slots in wood + and bone; that is, to make handles or shafts for other tools. + They must also be the tools with which much of the engraving on + bone (see p. 83) was done. There is a bewildering variety of + different kinds of burins. + +[Illustration: TANGED POINT] + + 3. The “tanged” point. These stone points were used to tip arrows or + light spears. They were made from blades, and they had a long tang + at the bottom where they were fixed to the shaft. At the place + where the tang met the main body of the stone point, there was + a marked “shoulder,” the beginnings of a barb. Such points had + either one or two shoulders. + +[Illustration: NOTCHED BLADE] + + 4. The “notched” or “strangulated” blade. Along with the points for + arrows or light spears must go a tool to prepare the arrow or + spear shaft. Today, such a tool would be called a “draw-knife” or + a “spoke-shave,” and this is what the notched blades probably are. + Our spoke-shaves have sharp straight cutting blades and really + “shave.” Notched blades of flint probably scraped rather than cut. + + 5. The “awl,” “drill,” or “borer.” These blade tools are worked out + to a spike-like point. They must have been used for making holes + in wood, bone, shell, skin, or other things. + +[Illustration: DRILL OR AWL] + + 6. The “end-scraper on a blade” is a tool with one or both ends + worked so as to give a good scraping edge. It could have been used + to hollow out wood or bone, scrape hides, remove bark from trees, + and a number of other things (p. 78). + +There is one very special type of flint tool, which is best known from +western Europe in an industry called the Solutrean. These tools were +usually made of blades, but the best examples are so carefully worked +on both sides (bifacially) that it is impossible to see the original +blade. This tool is + + 7. The “laurel leaf” point. Some of these tools were long and + dagger-like, and must have been used as knives or daggers. Others + were small, called “willow leaf,” and must have been mounted on + spear or arrow shafts. Another typical Solutrean tool is the + “shouldered” point. Both the “laurel leaf” and “shouldered” point + types are illustrated (see above and p. 79). + +[Illustration: END-SCRAPER ON A BLADE] + +[Illustration: LAUREL LEAF POINT] + +The industries characterized by tools in the blade tradition also +yield some flake and core tools. We will end this list with two types +of tools that appear at this time. The first is made of a flake; the +second is a core tool. + +[Illustration: SHOULDERED POINT] + + 8. The “keel-shaped round scraper” is usually small and quite round, + and has had chips removed up to a peak in the center. It is called + “keel-shaped” because it is supposed to look (when upside down) + like a section through a boat. Actually, it looks more like a tent + or an umbrella. Its outer edges are sharp all the way around, and + it was probably a general purpose scraping tool (see illustration, + p. 81). + + 9. The “keel-shaped nosed scraper” is a much larger and heavier tool + than the round scraper. It was made on a core with a flat bottom, + and has one nicely worked end or “nose.” Such tools are usually + large enough to be easily grasped, and probably were used like + push planes (see illustration, p. 81). + +[Illustration: KEEL-SHAPED ROUND SCRAPER] + +[Illustration: KEEL-SHAPED NOSED SCRAPER] + +The stone tools (usually made of flint) we have just listed are among +the most easily recognized blade tools, although they show differences +in detail at different times. There are also many other kinds. Not +all of these tools appear in any one industry at one time. Thus the +different industries shown in the chart (p. 72) each have only some +of the blade tools we’ve just listed, and also a few flake tools. Some +industries even have a few core tools. The particular types of blade +tools appearing in one cave layer or another, and the frequency of +appearance of the different types, tell which industry we have in each +layer. + + +OTHER KINDS OF TOOLS + +By this time in Europe--say from about 40,000 to about 10,000 years +ago--we begin to find other kinds of material too. Bone tools begin +to appear. There are knives, pins, needles with eyes, and little +double-pointed straight bars of bone that were probably fish-hooks. The +fish-line would have been fastened in the center of the bar; when the +fish swallowed the bait, the bar would have caught cross-wise in the +fish’s mouth. + +One quite special kind of bone tool is a long flat point for a light +spear. It has a deep notch cut up into the breadth of its base, and is +called a “split-based bone point” (p. 82). We know examples of bone +beads from these times, and of bone handles for flint tools. Pierced +teeth of some animals were worn as beads or pendants, but I am not sure +that elks’ teeth were worn this early. There are even spool-shaped +“buttons” or toggles. + +[Illustration: SPLIT-BASED BONE POINT] + +[Illustration: SPEAR-THROWER] + +[Illustration: BONE HARPOON] + +Antler came into use for tools, especially in central and western +Europe. We do not know the use of one particular antler tool that +has a large hole bored in one end. One suggestion is that it was +a thong-stropper used to strop or work up hide thongs (see +illustration, below); another suggestion is that it was an arrow-shaft +straightener. + +Another interesting tool, usually of antler, is the spear-thrower, +which is little more than a stick with a notch or hook on one end. +The hook fits into the butt end of the spear, and the length of the +spear-thrower allows you to put much more power into the throw (p. +82). It works on pretty much the same principle as the sling. + +Very fancy harpoons of antler were also made in the latter half of +the period in western Europe. These harpoons had barbs on one or both +sides and a base which would slip out of the shaft (p. 82). Some have +engraved decoration. + + +THE BEGINNING OF ART + +[Illustration: THONG-STROPPER] + +In western Europe, at least, the period saw the beginning of several +kinds of art work. It is handy to break the art down into two great +groups: the movable art, and the cave paintings and sculpture. The +movable art group includes the scratchings, engravings, and modeling +which decorate tools and weapons. Knives, stroppers, spear-throwers, +harpoons, and sometimes just plain fragments of bone or antler are +often carved. There is also a group of large flat pebbles which seem +almost to have served as sketch blocks. The surfaces of these various +objects may show animals, or rather abstract floral designs, or +geometric designs. + +[Illustration: “VENUS” FIGURINE FROM WILLENDORF] + +Some of the movable art is not done on tools. The most remarkable +examples of this class are little figures of women. These women seem to +be pregnant, and their most female characteristics are much emphasized. +It is thought that these “Venus” or “Mother-goddess” figurines may be +meant to show the great forces of nature--fertility and the birth of +life. + + +CAVE PAINTINGS + +In the paintings on walls and ceilings of caves we have some examples +that compare with the best art of any time. The subjects were usually +animals, the great cold-weather beasts of the end of the Ice Age: the +mammoth, the wooly rhinoceros, the bison, the reindeer, the wild horse, +the bear, the wild boar, and wild cattle. As in the movable art, there +are different styles in the cave art. The really great cave art is +pretty well restricted to southern France and Cantabrian (northwestern) +Spain. + +There are several interesting things about the “Franco-Cantabrian” cave +art. It was done deep down in the darkest and most dangerous parts of +the caves, although the men lived only in the openings of caves. If you +think what they must have had for lights--crude lamps of hollowed stone +have been found, which must have burned some kind of oil or grease, +with a matted hair or fiber wick--and of the animals that may have +lurked in the caves, you’ll understand the part about danger. Then, +too, we’re sure the pictures these people painted were not simply to be +looked at and admired, for they painted one picture right over other +pictures which had been done earlier. Clearly, it was the _act_ of +_painting_ that counted. The painter had to go way down into the most +mysterious depths of the earth and create an animal in paint. Possibly +he believed that by doing this he gained some sort of magic power over +the same kind of animal when he hunted it in the open air. It certainly +doesn’t look as if he cared very much about the picture he painted--as +a finished product to be admired--for he or somebody else soon went +down and painted another animal right over the one he had done. + +The cave art of the Franco-Cantabrian style is one of the great +artistic achievements of all time. The subjects drawn are almost always +the larger animals of the time: the bison, wild cattle and horses, the +wooly rhinoceros, the mammoth, the wild boar, and the bear. In some of +the best examples, the beasts are drawn in full color and the paintings +are remarkably alive and charged with energy. They come from the hands +of men who knew the great animals well--knew the feel of their fur, the +tremendous drive of their muscles, and the danger one faced when he +hunted them. + +Another artistic style has been found in eastern Spain. It includes +lively drawings, often of people hunting with bow and arrow. The East +Spanish art is found on open rock faces and in rock-shelters. It is +less spectacular and apparently more recent than the Franco-Cantabrian +cave art. + + +LIFE AT THE END OF THE ICE AGE IN EUROPE + +Life in these times was probably as good as a hunter could expect it +to be. Game and fish seem to have been plentiful; berries and wild +fruits probably were, too. From France to Russia, great pits or +piles of animal bones have been found. Some of this killing was done +as our Plains Indians killed the buffalo--by stampeding them over +steep river banks or cliffs. There were also good tools for hunting, +however. In western Europe, people lived in the openings of caves and +under overhanging rocks. On the great plains of eastern Europe, very +crude huts were being built, half underground. The first part of this +time must have been cold, for it was the middle and end phases of the +last great glaciation. Northern Europe from Scotland to Scandinavia, +northern Germany and Russia, and also the higher mountains to the +south, were certainly covered with ice. But people had fire, and the +needles and tools that were used for scraping hides must mean that they +wore clothing. + +It is clear that men were thinking of a great variety of things beside +the tools that helped them get food and shelter. Such burials as we +find have more grave-gifts than before. Beads and ornaments and often +flint, bone, or antler tools are included in the grave, and sometimes +the body is sprinkled with red ochre. Red is the color of blood, which +means life, and of fire, which means heat. Professor Childe wonders if +the red ochre was a pathetic attempt at magic--to give back to the body +the heat that had gone from it. But pathetic or not, it is sure proof +that these people were already moved by death as men still are moved by +it. + +Their art is another example of the direction the human mind was +taking. And when I say human, I mean it in the fullest sense, for this +is the time in which fully modern man has appeared. On page 34, we +spoke of the Cro-Magnon group and of the Combe Capelle-Brünn group of +Caucasoids and of the Grimaldi “Negroids,” who are no longer believed +to be Negroid. I doubt that any one of these groups produced most of +the achievements of the times. It’s not yet absolutely sure which +particular group produced the great cave art. The artists were almost +certainly a blend of several (no doubt already mixed) groups. The pair +of Grimaldians were buried in a grave with a sprinkling of red ochre, +and were provided with shell beads and ornaments and with some blade +tools of flint. Regardless of the different names once given them by +the human paleontologists, each of these groups seems to have shared +equally in the cultural achievements of the times, for all that the +archeologists can say. + + +MICROLITHS + +One peculiar set of tools seems to serve as a marker for the very last +phase of the Ice Age in southwestern Europe. This tool-making habit is +also found about the shore of the Mediterranean basin, and it moved +into northern Europe as the last glaciation pulled northward. People +began making blade tools of very small size. They learned how to chip +very slender and tiny blades from a prepared core. Then they made these +little blades into tiny triangles, half-moons (“lunates”), trapezoids, +and several other geometric forms. These little tools are called +“microliths.” They are so small that most of them must have been fixed +in handles or shafts. + +[Illustration: MICROLITHS + + BLADE FRAGMENT + BURIN + LUNATE + TRAPEZOID + SCALENE TRIANGLE + ARROWHEAD] + +We have found several examples of microliths mounted in shafts. In +northern Europe, where their use soon spread, the microlithic triangles +or lunates were set in rows down each side of a bone or wood point. +One corner of each little triangle stuck out, and the whole thing +made a fine barbed harpoon. In historic times in Egypt, geometric +trapezoidal microliths were still in use as arrowheads. They were +fastened--broad end out--on the end of an arrow shaft. It seems queer +to give an arrow a point shaped like a “T.” Actually, the little points +were very sharp, and must have pierced the hides of animals very +easily. We also think that the broader cutting edge of the point may +have caused more bleeding than a pointed arrowhead would. In hunting +fleet-footed animals like the gazelle, which might run for miles after +being shot with an arrow, it was an advantage to cause as much bleeding +as possible, for the animal would drop sooner. + +We are not really sure where the microliths were first invented. There +is some evidence that they appear early in the Near East. Their use +was very common in northwest Africa but this came later. The microlith +makers who reached south Russia and central Europe possibly moved up +out of the Near East. Or it may have been the other way around; we +simply don’t yet know. + +Remember that the microliths we are talking about here were made from +carefully prepared little blades, and are often geometric in outline. +Each microlithic industry proper was made up, in good part, of such +tiny blade tools. But there were also some normal-sized blade tools and +even some flake scrapers, in most microlithic industries. I emphasize +this bladelet and the geometric character of the microlithic industries +of the western Old World, since there has sometimes been confusion in +the matter. Sometimes small flake chips, utilized as minute pointed +tools, have been called “microliths.” They may be _microlithic_ in size +in terms of the general meaning of the word, but they do not seem to +belong to the sub-tradition of the blade tool preparation habits which +we have been discussing here. + + +LATER BLADE-TOOL INDUSTRIES OF THE NEAR EAST AND AFRICA + +The blade-tool industries of normal size we talked about earlier spread +from Europe to central Siberia. We noted that blade tools were made +in western Asia too, and early, although Professor Garrod is no longer +sure that the whole tradition originated in the Near East. If you look +again at my chart (p. 72) you will note that in western Asia I list +some of the names of the western European industries, but with the +qualification “-like” (for example, “Gravettian-like”). The western +Asiatic blade-tool industries do vaguely recall some aspects of those +of western Europe, but we would probably be better off if we used +completely local names for them. The “Emiran” of my chart is such an +example; its industry includes a long spike-like blade point which has +no western European counterpart. + +When we last spoke of Africa (p. 66), I told you that stone tools +there were continuing in the Levalloisian flake tradition, and were +becoming smaller. At some time during this process, two new tool +types appeared in northern Africa: one was the Aterian point with +a tang (p. 67), and the other was a sort of “laurel leaf” point, +called the “Sbaikian.” These two tool types were both produced from +flakes. The Sbaikian points, especially, are roughly similar to some +of the Solutrean points of Europe. It has been suggested that both the +Sbaikian and Aterian points may be seen on their way to France through +their appearance in the Spanish cave deposits of Parpallo, but there is +also a rival “pre-Solutrean” in central Europe. We still do not know +whether there was any contact between the makers of these north African +tools and the Solutrean tool-makers. What does seem clear is that the +blade-tool tradition itself arrived late in northern Africa. + + +NETHER AFRICA + +Blade tools and “laurel leaf” points and some other probably late +stone tool types also appear in central and southern Africa. There +are geometric microliths on bladelets and even some coarse pottery in +east Africa. There is as yet no good way of telling just where these +items belong in time; in broad geological terms they are “late.” +Some people have guessed that they are as early as similar European +and Near Eastern examples, but I doubt it. The makers of small-sized +Levalloisian flake tools occupied much of Africa until very late in +time. + + +THE FAR EAST + +India and the Far East still seem to be going their own way. In India, +some blade tools have been found. These are not well dated, save that +we believe they must be post-Pleistocene. In the Far East it looks as +if the old chopper-tool tradition was still continuing. For Burma, +Dr. Movius feels this is fairly certain; for China he feels even more +certain. Actually, we know very little about the Far East at about the +time of the last glaciation. This is a shame, too, as you will soon +agree. + + +THE NEW WORLD BECOMES INHABITED + +At some time toward the end of the last great glaciation--almost +certainly after 20,000 years ago--people began to move over Bering +Strait, from Asia into America. As you know, the American Indians have +been assumed to be basically Mongoloids. New studies of blood group +types make this somewhat uncertain, but there is no doubt that the +ancestors of the American Indians came from Asia. + +The stone-tool traditions of Europe, Africa, the Near and Middle East, +and central Siberia, did _not_ move into the New World. With only a +very few special or late exceptions, there are _no_ core-bifaces, +flakes, or blade tools of the Old World. Such things just haven’t been +found here. + +This is why I say it’s a shame we don’t know more of the end of the +chopper-tool tradition in the Far East. According to Weidenreich, +the Mongoloids were in the Far East long before the end of the last +glaciation. If the genetics of the blood group types do demand a +non-Mongoloid ancestry for the American Indians, who else may have been +in the Far East 25,000 years ago? We know a little about the habits +for making stone tools which these first people brought with them, +and these habits don’t conform with those of the western Old World. +We’d better keep our eyes open for whatever happened to the end of +the chopper-tool tradition in northern China; already there are hints +that it lasted late there. Also we should watch future excavations +in eastern Siberia. Perhaps we shall find the chopper-tool tradition +spreading up that far. + + +THE NEW ERA + +Perhaps it comes in part from the way I read the evidence and perhaps +in part it is only intuition, but I feel that the materials of this +chapter suggest a new era in the ways of life. Before about 40,000 +years ago, people simply “gathered” their food, wandering over large +areas to scavenge or to hunt in a simple sort of way. But here we +have seen them “settling-in” more, perhaps restricting themselves in +their wanderings and adapting themselves to a given locality in more +intensive ways. This intensification might be suggested by the word +“collecting.” The ways of life we described in the earlier chapters +were “food-gathering” ways, but now an era of “food-collecting” has +begun. We shall see further intensifications of it in the next chapter. + + + + +End and PRELUDE + +[Illustration] + + +Up to the end of the last glaciation, we prehistorians have a +relatively comfortable time schedule. The farther back we go the less +exact we can be about time and details. Elbow-room of five, ten, +even fifty or more thousands of years becomes available for us to +maneuver in as we work backward in time. But now our story has come +forward to the point where more exact methods of dating are at hand. +The radioactive carbon method reaches back into the span of the last +glaciation. There are other methods, developed by the geologists and +paleobotanists, which supplement and extend the usefulness of the +radioactive carbon dates. And, happily, as our means of being more +exact increases, our story grows more exciting. There are also more +details of culture for us to deal with, which add to the interest. + + +CHANGES AT THE END OF THE ICE AGE + +The last great glaciation of the Ice Age was a two-part affair, with a +sub-phase at the end of the second part. In Europe the last sub-phase +of this glaciation commenced somewhere around 15,000 years ago. Then +the glaciers began to melt back, for the last time. Remember that +Professor Antevs (p. 19) isn’t sure the Ice Age is over yet! This +melting sometimes went by fits and starts, and the weather wasn’t +always changing for the better; but there was at least one time when +European weather was even better than it is now. + +The melting back of the glaciers and the weather fluctuations caused +other changes, too. We know a fair amount about these changes in +Europe. In an earlier chapter, we said that the whole Ice Age was a +matter of continual change over long periods of time. As the last +glaciers began to melt back some interesting things happened to mankind. + +In Europe, along with the melting of the last glaciers, geography +itself was changing. Britain and Ireland had certainly become islands +by 5000 B.C. The Baltic was sometimes a salt sea, sometimes a large +fresh-water lake. Forests began to grow where the glaciers had been, +and in what had once been the cold tundra areas in front of the +glaciers. The great cold-weather animals--the mammoth and the wooly +rhinoceros--retreated northward and finally died out. It is probable +that the efficient hunting of the earlier people of 20,000 or 25,000 +to about 12,000 years ago had helped this process along (see p. 86). +Europeans, especially those of the post-glacial period, had to keep +changing to keep up with the times. + +The archeological materials for the time from 10,000 to 6000 B.C. seem +simpler than those of the previous five thousand years. The great cave +art of France and Spain had gone; so had the fine carving in bone and +antler. Smaller, speedier animals were moving into the new forests. New +ways of hunting them, or ways of getting other food, had to be found. +Hence, new tools and weapons were necessary. Some of the people who +moved into northern Germany were successful reindeer hunters. Then the +reindeer moved off to the north, and again new sources of food had to +be found. + + +THE READJUSTMENTS COMPLETED IN EUROPE + +After a few thousand years, things began to look better. Or at least +we can say this: By about 6000 B.C. we again get hotter archeological +materials. The best of these come from the north European area: +Britain, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, north Germany, southern Norway and +Sweden. Much of this north European material comes from bogs and swamps +where it had become water-logged and has kept very well. Thus we have +much more complete _assemblages_[4] than for any time earlier. + + [4] “Assemblage” is a useful word when there are different kinds of + archeological materials belonging together, from one area and of + one time. An assemblage is made up of a number of “industries” + (that is, all the tools in chipped stone, all the tools in + bone, all the tools in wood, the traces of houses, etc.) and + everything else that manages to survive, such as the art, the + burials, the bones of the animals used as food, and the traces + of plant foods; in fact, everything that has been left to us + and can be used to help reconstruct the lives of the people to + whom it once belonged. Our own present-day “assemblage” would be + the sum total of all the objects in our mail-order catalogues, + department stores and supply houses of every sort, our churches, + our art galleries and other buildings, together with our roads, + canals, dams, irrigation ditches, and any other traces we might + leave of ourselves, from graves to garbage dumps. Not everything + would last, so that an archeologist digging us up--say 2,000 + years from now--would find only the most durable items in our + assemblage. + +The best known of these assemblages is the _Maglemosian_, named after a +great Danish peat-swamp where much has been found. + +[Illustration: SKETCH OF MAGLEMOSIAN ASSEMBLAGE + + CHIPPED STONE + HEMP + GROUND STONE + BONE AND ANTLER + WOOD] + +In the Maglemosian assemblage the flint industry was still very +important. Blade tools, tanged arrow points, and burins were still +made, but there were also axes for cutting the trees in the new +forests. Moreover, the tiny microlithic blades, in a variety of +geometric forms, are also found. Thus, a specialized tradition that +possibly began east of the Mediterranean had reached northern Europe. +There was also a ground stone industry; some axes and club-heads were +made by grinding and polishing rather than by chipping. The industries +in bone and antler show a great variety of tools: axes, fish-hooks, +fish spears, handles and hafts for other tools, harpoons, and clubs. +A remarkable industry in wood has been preserved. Paddles, sled +runners, handles for tools, and bark floats for fish-nets have been +found. There are even fish-nets made of plant fibers. Canoes of some +kind were no doubt made. Bone and antler tools were decorated with +simple patterns, and amber was collected. Wooden bows and arrows are +found. + +It seems likely that the Maglemosian bog finds are remains of summer +camps, and that in winter the people moved to higher and drier regions. +Childe calls them the “Forest folk”; they probably lived much the +same sort of life as did our pre-agricultural Indians of the north +central states. They hunted small game or deer; they did a great deal +of fishing; they collected what plant food they could find. In fact, +their assemblage shows us again that remarkable ability of men to adapt +themselves to change. They had succeeded in domesticating the dog; he +was still a very wolf-like dog, but his long association with mankind +had now begun. Professor Coon believes that these people were direct +descendants of the men of the glacial age and that they had much the +same appearance. He believes that most of the Ice Age survivors still +extant are living today in the northwestern European area. + + +SOUTH AND CENTRAL EUROPE PERHAPS AS READJUSTED AS THE NORTH + +There is always one trouble with things that come from areas where +preservation is exceptionally good: The very quantity of materials in +such an assemblage tends to make things from other areas look poor +and simple, although they may not have been so originally at all. The +assemblages of the people who lived to the south of the Maglemosian +area may also have been quite large and varied; but, unfortunately, +relatively little of the southern assemblages has lasted. The +water-logged sites of the Maglemosian area preserved a great deal +more. Hence the Maglemosian itself _looks_ quite advanced to us, when +we compare it with the few things that have happened to last in other +areas. If we could go back and wander over the Europe of eight thousand +years ago, we would probably find that the peoples of France, central +Europe, and south central Russia were just as advanced as those of the +north European-Baltic belt. + +South of the north European belt the hunting-food-collecting peoples +were living on as best they could during this time. One interesting +group, which seems to have kept to the regions of sandy soil and scrub +forest, made great quantities of geometric microliths. These are the +materials called _Tardenoisian_. The materials of the “Forest folk” of +France and central Europe generally are called _Azilian_; Dr. Movius +believes the term might best be restricted to the area south of the +Loire River. + + +HOW MUCH REAL CHANGE WAS THERE? + +You can see that no really _basic_ change in the way of life has yet +been described. Childe sees the problem that faced the Europeans of +10,000 to 3000 B.C. as a problem in readaptation to the post-glacial +forest environment. By 6000 B.C. some quite successful solutions of +the problem--like the Maglemosian--had been made. The upsets that came +with the melting of the last ice gradually brought about all sorts of +changes in the tools and food-getting habits, but the people themselves +were still just as much simple hunters, fishers, and food-collectors as +they had been in 25,000 B.C. It could be said that they changed just +enough so that they would not have to change. But there is a bit more +to it than this. + +Professor Mathiassen of Copenhagen, who knows the archeological remains +of this time very well, poses a question. He speaks of the material +as being neither rich nor progressive, in fact “rather stagnant,” but +he goes on to add that the people had a certain “receptiveness” and +were able to adapt themselves quickly when the next change did come. +My own understanding of the situation is that the “Forest folk” made +nothing as spectacular as had the producers of the earlier Magdalenian +assemblage and the Franco-Cantabrian art. On the other hand, they +_seem_ to have been making many more different kinds of tools for many +more different kinds of tasks than had their Ice Age forerunners. I +emphasize “seem” because the preservation in the Maglemosian bogs +is very complete; certainly we cannot list anywhere near as many +different things for earlier times as we did for the Maglemosians +(p. 94). I believe this experimentation with all kinds of new tools +and gadgets, this intensification of adaptiveness (p. 91), this +“receptiveness,” even if it is still only pointed toward hunting, +fishing, and food-collecting, is an important thing. + +Remember that the only marker we have handy for the _beginning_ of +this tendency toward “receptiveness” and experimentation is the +little microlithic blade tools of various geometric forms. These, we +saw, began before the last ice had melted away, and they lasted on +in use for a very long time. I wish there were a better marker than +the microliths but I do not know of one. Remember, too, that as yet +we can only use the microliths as a marker in Europe and about the +Mediterranean. + + +CHANGES IN OTHER AREAS? + +All this last section was about Europe. How about the rest of the world +when the last glaciers were melting away? + +We simply don’t know much about this particular time in other parts +of the world except in Europe, the Mediterranean basin and the Middle +East. People were certainly continuing to move into the New World by +way of Siberia and the Bering Strait about this time. But for the +greater part of Africa and Asia, we do not know exactly what was +happening. Some day, we shall no doubt find out; today we are without +clear information. + + +REAL CHANGE AND PRELUDE IN THE NEAR EAST + +The appearance of the microliths and the developments made by the +“Forest folk” of northwestern Europe also mark an end. They show us +the terminal phase of the old food-collecting way of life. It grows +increasingly clear that at about the same time that the Maglemosian and +other “Forest folk” were adapting themselves to hunting, fishing, and +collecting in new ways to fit the post-glacial environment, something +completely new was being made ready in western Asia. + +Unfortunately, we do not have as much understanding of the climate and +environment of the late Ice Age in western Asia as we have for most +of Europe. Probably the weather was never so violent or life quite +so rugged as it was in northern Europe. We know that the microliths +made their appearance in western Asia at least by 10,000 B.C. and +possibly earlier, marking the beginning of the terminal phase of +food-collecting. Then, gradually, we begin to see the build-up towards +the first _basic change_ in human life. + +This change amounted to a revolution just as important as the +Industrial Revolution. In it, men first learned to domesticate +plants and animals. They began _producing_ their food instead of +simply gathering or collecting it. When their food-production +became reasonably effective, people could and did settle down in +village-farming communities. With the appearance of the little farming +villages, a new way of life was actually under way. Professor Childe +has good reason to speak of the “food-producing revolution,” for it was +indeed a revolution. + + +QUESTIONS ABOUT CAUSE + +We do not yet know _how_ and _why_ this great revolution took place. We +are only just beginning to put the questions properly. I suspect the +answers will concern some delicate and subtle interplay between man and +nature. Clearly, both the level of culture and the natural condition of +the environment must have been ready for the great change, before the +change itself could come about. + +It is going to take years of co-operative field work by both +archeologists and the natural scientists who are most helpful to them +before the _how_ and _why_ answers begin to appear. Anthropologically +trained archeologists are fascinated with the cultures of men in times +of great change. About ten or twelve thousand years ago, the general +level of culture in many parts of the world seems to have been ready +for change. In northwestern Europe, we saw that cultures “changed +just enough so that they would not have to change.” We linked this to +environmental changes with the coming of post-glacial times. + +In western Asia, we archeologists can prove that the food-producing +revolution actually took place. We can see _the_ important consequence +of effective domestication of plants and animals in the appearance of +the settled village-farming community. And within the village-farming +community was the seed of civilization. The way in which effective +domestication of plants and animals came about, however, must also be +linked closely with the natural environment. Thus the archeologists +will not solve the _how_ and _why_ questions alone--they will need the +help of interested natural scientists in the field itself. + + +PRECONDITIONS FOR THE REVOLUTION + +Especially at this point in our story, we must remember how culture and +environment go hand in hand. Neither plants nor animals domesticate +themselves; men domesticate them. Furthermore, men usually domesticate +only those plants and animals which are useful. There is a good +question here: What is cultural usefulness? But I shall side-step it to +save time. Men cannot domesticate plants and animals that do not exist +in the environment where the men live. Also, there are certainly some +animals and probably some plants that resist domestication, although +they might be useful. + +This brings me back again to the point that _both_ the level of culture +and the natural condition of the environment--with the proper plants +and animals in it--must have been ready before domestication could +have happened. But this is precondition, not cause. Why did effective +food-production happen first in the Near East? Why did it happen +independently in the New World slightly later? Why also in the Far +East? Why did it happen at all? Why are all human beings not still +living as the Maglemosians did? These are the questions we still have +to face. + + +CULTURAL “RECEPTIVENESS” AND PROMISING ENVIRONMENTS + +Until the archeologists and the natural scientists--botanists, +geologists, zoologists, and general ecologists--have spent many more +years on the problem, we shall not have full _how_ and _why_ answers. I +do think, however, that we are beginning to understand what to look for. + +We shall have to learn much more of what makes the cultures of men +“receptive” and experimental. Did change in the environment alone +force it? Was it simply a case of Professor Toynbee’s “challenge and +response?” I cannot believe the answer is quite that simple. Were it +so simple, we should want to know why the change hadn’t come earlier, +along with earlier environmental changes. We shall not know the answer, +however, until we have excavated the traces of many more cultures of +the time in question. We shall doubtless also have to learn more about, +and think imaginatively about, the simpler cultures still left today. +The “mechanics” of culture in general will be bound to interest us. + +It will also be necessary to learn much more of the environments of +10,000 to 12,000 years ago. In which regions of the world were the +natural conditions most promising? Did this promise include plants and +animals which could be domesticated, or did it only offer new ways of +food-collecting? There is much work to do on this problem, but we are +beginning to get some general hints. + +Before I begin to detail the hints we now have from western Asia, I +want to do two things. First, I shall tell you of an old theory as to +how food-production might have appeared. Second, I will bother you with +some definitions which should help us in our thinking as the story goes +on. + + +AN OLD THEORY AS TO THE CAUSE OF THE REVOLUTION + +The idea that change would result, if the balance between nature +and culture became upset, is of course not a new one. For at least +twenty-five years, there has been a general theory as to _how_ the +food-producing revolution happened. This theory depends directly on the +idea of natural change in the environment. + +The five thousand years following about 10,000 B.C. must have been +very difficult ones, the theory begins. These were the years when +the most marked melting of the last glaciers was going on. While the +glaciers were in place, the climate to the south of them must have been +different from the climate in those areas today. You have no doubt read +that people once lived in regions now covered by the Sahara Desert. +This is true; just when is not entirely clear. The theory is that +during the time of the glaciers, there was a broad belt of rain winds +south of the glaciers. These rain winds would have kept north Africa, +the Nile Valley, and the Middle East green and fertile. But when the +glaciers melted back to the north, the belt of rain winds is supposed +to have moved north too. Then the people living south and east of the +Mediterranean would have found that their water supply was drying up, +that the animals they hunted were dying or moving away, and that the +plant foods they collected were dried up and scarce. + +According to the theory, all this would have been true except in the +valleys of rivers and in oases in the growing deserts. Here, in the +only places where water was left, the men and animals and plants would +have clustered. They would have been forced to live close to one +another, in order to live at all. Presently the men would have seen +that some animals were more useful or made better food than others, +and so they would have begun to protect these animals from their +natural enemies. The men would also have been forced to try new plant +foods--foods which possibly had to be prepared before they could be +eaten. Thus, with trials and errors, but by being forced to live close +to plants and animals, men would have learned to domesticate them. + + +THE OLD THEORY TOO SIMPLE FOR THE FACTS + +This theory was set up before we really knew anything in detail about +the later prehistory of the Near and Middle East. We now know that +the facts which have been found don’t fit the old theory at all well. +Also, I have yet to find an American meteorologist who feels that we +know enough about the changes in the weather pattern to say that it can +have been so simple and direct. And, of course, the glacial ice which +began melting after 12,000 years ago was merely the last sub-phase of +the last great glaciation. There had also been three earlier periods +of great alpine glaciers, and long periods of warm weather in between. +If the rain belt moved north as the glaciers melted for the last time, +it must have moved in the same direction in earlier times. Thus, the +forced neighborliness of men, plants, and animals in river valleys and +oases must also have happened earlier. Why didn’t domestication happen +earlier, then? + +Furthermore, it does not seem to be in the oases and river valleys +that we have our first or only traces of either food-production +or the earliest farming villages. These traces are also in the +hill-flanks of the mountains of western Asia. Our earliest sites of the +village-farmers do not seem to indicate a greatly different climate +from that which the same region now shows. In fact, everything we now +know suggests that the old theory was just too simple an explanation to +have been the true one. The only reason I mention it--beyond correcting +the ideas you may get in the general texts--is that it illustrates the +kind of thinking we shall have to do, even if it is doubtless wrong in +detail. + +We archeologists shall have to depend much more than we ever have on +the natural scientists who can really help us. I can tell you this from +experience. I had the great good fortune to have on my expedition staff +in Iraq in 1954-55, a geologist, a botanist, and a zoologist. Their +studies added whole new bands of color to my spectrum of thinking about +_how_ and _why_ the revolution took place and how the village-farming +community began. But it was only a beginning; as I said earlier, we are +just now learning to ask the proper questions. + + +ABOUT STAGES AND ERAS + +Now come some definitions, so I may describe my material more easily. +Archeologists have always loved to make divisions and subdivisions +within the long range of materials which they have found. They often +disagree violently about which particular assemblage of material +goes into which subdivision, about what the subdivisions should be +named, about what the subdivisions really mean culturally. Some +archeologists, probably through habit, favor an old scheme of Grecized +names for the subdivisions: paleolithic, mesolithic, neolithic. I +refuse to use these words myself. They have meant too many different +things to too many different people and have tended to hide some pretty +fuzzy thinking. Probably you haven’t even noticed my own scheme of +subdivision up to now, but I’d better tell you in general what it is. + +I think of the earliest great group of archeological materials, from +which we can deduce only a food-gathering way of culture, as the +_food-gathering stage_. I say “stage” rather than “age,” because it +is not quite over yet; there are still a few primitive people in +out-of-the-way parts of the world who remain in the _food-gathering +stage_. In fact, Professor Julian Steward would probably prefer to call +it a food-gathering _level_ of existence, rather than a stage. This +would be perfectly acceptable to me. I also tend to find myself using +_collecting_, rather than _gathering_, for the more recent aspects or +era of the stage, as the word “collecting” appears to have more sense +of purposefulness and specialization than does “gathering” (see p. +91). + +Now, while I think we could make several possible subdivisions of the +food-gathering stage--I call my subdivisions of stages _eras_[5]--I +believe the only one which means much to us here is the last or +_terminal sub-era of food-collecting_ of the whole food-gathering +stage. The microliths seem to mark its approach in the northwestern +part of the Old World. It is really shown best in the Old World by +the materials of the “Forest folk,” the cultural adaptation to the +post-glacial environment in northwestern Europe. We talked about +the “Forest folk” at the beginning of this chapter, and I used the +Maglemosian assemblage of Denmark as an example. + + [5] It is difficult to find words which have a sequence or gradation + of meaning with respect to both development and a range of time + in the past, or with a range of time from somewhere in the past + which is perhaps not yet ended. One standard Webster definition + of _stage_ is: “One of the steps into which the material + development of man ... is divided.” I cannot find any dictionary + definition that suggests which of the words, _stage_ or _era_, + has the meaning of a longer span of time. Therefore, I have + chosen to let my eras be shorter, and to subdivide my stages + into eras. Webster gives _era_ as: “A signal stage of history, + an epoch.” When I want to subdivide my eras, I find myself using + _sub-eras_. Thus I speak of the _eras_ within a _stage_ and of + the _sub-eras_ within an _era_; that is, I do so when I feel + that I really have to, and when the evidence is clear enough to + allow it. + +The food-producing revolution ushers in the _food-producing stage_. +This stage began to be replaced by the _industrial stage_ only about +two hundred years ago. Now notice that my stage divisions are in terms +of technology and economics. We must think sharply to be sure that the +subdivisions of the stages, the eras, are in the same terms. This does +not mean that I think technology and economics are the only important +realms of culture. It is rather that for most of prehistoric time the +materials left to the archeologists tend to limit our deductions to +technology and economics. + +I’m so soon out of my competence, as conventional ancient history +begins, that I shall only suggest the earlier eras of the +food-producing stage to you. This book is about prehistory, and I’m not +a universal historian. + + +THE TWO EARLIEST ERAS OF THE FOOD-PRODUCING STAGE + +The food-producing stage seems to appear in western Asia with really +revolutionary suddenness. It is seen by the relative speed with which +the traces of new crafts appear in the earliest village-farming +community sites we’ve dug. It is seen by the spread and multiplication +of these sites themselves, and the remarkable growth in human +population we deduce from this increase in sites. We’ll look at some +of these sites and the archeological traces they yield in the next +chapter. When such village sites begin to appear, I believe we are in +the _era of the primary village-farming community_. I also believe this +is the second era of the food-producing stage. + +The first era of the food-producing stage, I believe, was an _era of +incipient cultivation and animal domestication_. I keep saying “I +believe” because the actual evidence for this earlier era is so slight +that one has to set it up mainly by playing a hunch for it. The reason +for playing the hunch goes about as follows. + +One thing we seem to be able to see, in the food-collecting era in +general, is a tendency for people to begin to settle down. This +settling down seemed to become further intensified in the terminal +era. How this is connected with Professor Mathiassen’s “receptiveness” +and the tendency to be experimental, we do not exactly know. The +evidence from the New World comes into play here as well as that from +the Old World. With this settling down in one place, the people of the +terminal era--especially the “Forest folk” whom we know best--began +making a great variety of new things. I remarked about this earlier in +the chapter. Dr. Robert M. Adams is of the opinion that this atmosphere +of experimentation with new tools--with new ways of collecting food--is +the kind of atmosphere in which one might expect trials at planting +and at animal domestication to have been made. We first begin to find +traces of more permanent life in outdoor camp sites, although caves +were still inhabited at the beginning of the terminal era. It is not +surprising at all that the “Forest folk” had already domesticated the +dog. In this sense, the whole era of food-collecting was becoming ready +and almost “incipient” for cultivation and animal domestication. + +Northwestern Europe was not the place for really effective beginnings +in agriculture and animal domestication. These would have had to take +place in one of those natural environments of promise, where a variety +of plants and animals, each possible of domestication, was available in +the wild state. Let me spell this out. Really effective food-production +must include a variety of items to make up a reasonably well-rounded +diet. The food-supply so produced must be trustworthy, even though +the food-producing peoples themselves might be happy to supplement +it with fish and wild strawberries, just as we do when such things +are available. So, as we said earlier, part of our problem is that +of finding a region with a natural environment which includes--and +did include, some ten thousand years ago--a variety of possibly +domesticable wild plants and animals. + + +NUCLEAR AREAS + +Now comes the last of my definitions. A region with a natural +environment which included a variety of wild plants and animals, +both possible and ready for domestication, would be a central +or core or _nuclear area_, that is, it would be when and _if_ +food-production took place within it. It is pretty hard for me to +imagine food-production having ever made an independent start outside +such a nuclear area, although there may be some possible nuclear areas +in which food-production never took place (possibly in parts of Africa, +for example). + +We know of several such nuclear areas. In the New World, Middle America +and the Andean highlands make up one or two; it is my understanding +that the evidence is not yet clear as to which. There seems to have +been a nuclear area somewhere in southeastern Asia, in the Malay +peninsula or Burma perhaps, connected with the early cultivation of +taro, breadfruit, the banana and the mango. Possibly the cultivation +of rice and the domestication of the chicken and of zebu cattle and +the water buffalo belong to this southeast Asiatic nuclear area. We +know relatively little about it archeologically, as yet. The nuclear +area which was the scene of the earliest experiment in effective +food-production was in western Asia. Since I know it best, I shall use +it as my example. + + +THE NUCLEAR NEAR EAST + +The nuclear area of western Asia is naturally the one of greatest +interest to people of the western cultural tradition. Our cultural +heritage began within it. The area itself is the region of the hilly +flanks of rain-watered grass-land which build up to the high mountain +ridges of Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and Palestine. The map on page +125 indicates the region. If you have a good atlas, try to locate the +zone which surrounds the drainage basin of the Tigris and Euphrates +Rivers at elevations of from approximately 2,000 to 5,000 feet. The +lower alluvial land of the Tigris-Euphrates basin itself has very +little rainfall. Some years ago Professor James Henry Breasted called +the alluvial lands of the Tigris-Euphrates a part of the “fertile +crescent.” These alluvial lands are very fertile if irrigated. Breasted +was most interested in the oriental civilizations of conventional +ancient history, and irrigation had been discovered before they +appeared. + +The country of hilly flanks above Breasted’s crescent receives from +10 to 20 or more inches of winter rainfall each year, which is about +what Kansas has. Above the hilly-flanks zone tower the peaks and ridges +of the Lebanon-Amanus chain bordering the coast-line from Palestine +to Turkey, the Taurus Mountains of southern Turkey, and the Zagros +range of the Iraq-Iran borderland. This rugged mountain frame for our +hilly-flanks zone rises to some magnificent alpine scenery, with peaks +of from ten to fifteen thousand feet in elevation. There are several +gaps in the Mediterranean coastal portion of the frame, through which +the winter’s rain-bearing winds from the sea may break so as to carry +rain to the foothills of the Taurus and the Zagros. + +The picture I hope you will have from this description is that of an +intermediate hilly-flanks zone lying between two regions of extremes. +The lower Tigris-Euphrates basin land is low and far too dry and hot +for agriculture based on rainfall alone; to the south and southwest, it +merges directly into the great desert of Arabia. The mountains which +lie above the hilly-flanks zone are much too high and rugged to have +encouraged farmers. + + +THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT OF THE NUCLEAR NEAR EAST + +The more we learn of this hilly-flanks zone that I describe, the +more it seems surely to have been a nuclear area. This is where we +archeologists need, and are beginning to get, the help of natural +scientists. They are coming to the conclusion that the natural +environment of the hilly-flanks zone today is much as it was some eight +to ten thousand years ago. There are still two kinds of wild wheat and +a wild barley, and the wild sheep, goat, and pig. We have discovered +traces of each of these at about nine thousand years ago, also traces +of wild ox, horse, and dog, each of which appears to be the probable +ancestor of the domesticated form. In fact, at about nine thousand +years ago, the two wheats, the barley, and at least the goat, were +already well on the road to domestication. + +The wild wheats give us an interesting clue. They are only available +together with the wild barley within the hilly-flanks zone. While the +wild barley grows in a variety of elevations and beyond the zone, +at least one of the wild wheats does not seem to grow below the hill +country. As things look at the moment, the domestication of both the +wheats together could _only_ have taken place within the hilly-flanks +zone. Barley seems to have first come into cultivation due to its +presence as a weed in already cultivated wheat fields. There is also +a suggestion--there is still much more to learn in the matter--that +the animals which were first domesticated were most at home up in the +hilly-flanks zone in their wild state. + +With a single exception--that of the dog--the earliest positive +evidence of domestication includes the two forms of wheat, the barley, +and the goat. The evidence comes from within the hilly-flanks zone. +However, it comes from a settled village proper, Jarmo (which I’ll +describe in the next chapter), and is thus from the era of the primary +village-farming community. We are still without positive evidence of +domesticated grain and animals in the first era of the food-producing +stage, that of incipient cultivation and animal domestication. + + +THE ERA OF INCIPIENT CULTIVATION AND ANIMAL DOMESTICATION + +I said above (p. 105) that my era of incipient cultivation and animal +domestication is mainly set up by playing a hunch. Although we cannot +really demonstrate it--and certainly not in the Near East--it would +be very strange for food-collectors not to have known a great deal +about the plants and animals most useful to them. They do seem to have +domesticated the dog. We can easily imagine them remembering to go +back, season after season, to a particular patch of ground where seeds +or acorns or berries grew particularly well. Most human beings, unless +they are extremely hungry, are attracted to baby animals, and many wild +pups or fawns or piglets must have been brought back alive by hunting +parties. + +In this last sense, man has probably always been an incipient +cultivator and domesticator. But I believe that Adams is right in +suggesting that this would be doubly true with the experimenters of +the terminal era of food-collecting. We noticed that they also seem +to have had a tendency to settle down. Now my hunch goes that _when_ +this experimentation and settling down took place within a potential +nuclear area--where a whole constellation of plants and animals +possible of domestication was available--the change was easily made. +Professor Charles A. Reed, our field colleague in zoology, agrees that +year-round settlement with plant domestication probably came before +there were important animal domestications. + + +INCIPIENT ERAS AND NUCLEAR AREAS + +I have put this scheme into a simple chart (p. 111) with the names +of a few of the sites we are going to talk about. You will see that my +hunch means that there are eras of incipient cultivation _only_ within +nuclear areas. In a nuclear area, the terminal era of food-collecting +would probably have been quite short. I do not know for how long a time +the era of incipient cultivation and domestication would have lasted, +but perhaps for several thousand years. Then it passed on into the era +of the primary village-farming community. + +Outside a nuclear area, the terminal era of food-collecting would last +for a long time; in a few out-of-the-way parts of the world, it still +hangs on. It would end in any particular place through contact with +and the spread of ideas of people who had passed on into one of the +more developed eras. In many cases, the terminal era of food-collecting +was ended by the incoming of the food-producing peoples themselves. +For example, the practices of food-production were carried into Europe +by the actual movement of some numbers of peoples (we don’t know how +many) who had reached at least the level of the primary village-farming +community. The “Forest folk” learned food-production from them. There +was never an era of incipient cultivation and domestication proper in +Europe, if my hunch is right. + + +ARCHEOLOGICAL DIFFICULTIES IN SEEING THE INCIPIENT ERA + +The way I see it, two things were required in order that an era of +incipient cultivation and domestication could begin. First, there had +to be the natural environment of a nuclear area, with its whole group +of plants and animals capable of domestication. This is the aspect of +the matter which we’ve said is directly given by nature. But it is +quite possible that such an environment with such a group of plants +and animals in it may have existed well before ten thousand years ago +in the Near East. It is also quite possible that the same promising +condition may have existed in regions which never developed into +nuclear areas proper. Here, again, we come back to the cultural factor. +I think it was that “atmosphere of experimentation” we’ve talked about +once or twice before. I can’t define it for you, other than to say that +by the end of the Ice Age, the general level of many cultures was ready +for change. Ask me how and why this was so, and I’ll tell you we don’t +know yet, and that if we did understand this kind of question, there +would be no need for me to go on being a prehistorian! + +[Illustration: POSSIBLE RELATIONSHIPS OF STAGES AND ERAS IN WESTERN +ASIA AND NORTHEASTERN AFRICA] + +Now since this was an era of incipience, of the birth of new ideas, +and of experimentation, it is very difficult to see its traces +archeologically. New tools having to do with the new ways of getting +and, in fact, producing food would have taken some time to develop. +It need not surprise us too much if we cannot find hoes for planting +and sickles for reaping grain at the very beginning. We might expect +a time of making-do with some of the older tools, or with make-shift +tools, for some of the new jobs. The present-day wild cousin of the +domesticated sheep still lives in the mountains of western Asia. It has +no wool, only a fine down under hair like that of a deer, so it need +not surprise us to find neither the whorls used for spinning nor traces +of woolen cloth. It must have taken some time for a wool-bearing sheep +to develop and also time for the invention of the new tools which go +with weaving. It would have been the same with other kinds of tools for +the new way of life. + +It is difficult even for an experienced comparative zoologist to tell +which are the bones of domesticated animals and which are those of +their wild cousins. This is especially so because the animal bones the +archeologists find are usually fragmentary. Furthermore, we do not have +a sort of library collection of the skeletons of the animals or an +herbarium of the plants of those times, against which the traces which +the archeologists find may be checked. We are only beginning to get +such collections for the modern wild forms of animals and plants from +some of our nuclear areas. In the nuclear area in the Near East, some +of the wild animals, at least, have already become extinct. There are +no longer wild cattle or wild horses in western Asia. We know they were +there from the finds we’ve made in caves of late Ice Age times, and +from some slightly later sites. + + +SITES WITH ANTIQUITIES OF THE INCIPIENT ERA + +So far, we know only a very few sites which would suit my notion of the +incipient era of cultivation and animal domestication. I am closing +this chapter with descriptions of two of the best Near Eastern examples +I know of. You may not be satisfied that what I am able to describe +makes a full-bodied era of development at all. Remember, however, that +I’ve told you I’m largely playing a kind of a hunch, and also that the +archeological materials of this era will always be extremely difficult +to interpret. At the beginning of any new way of life, there will be a +great tendency for people to make-do, at first, with tools and habits +they are already used to. I would suspect that a great deal of this +making-do went on almost to the end of this era. + + +THE NATUFIAN, AN ASSEMBLAGE OF THE INCIPIENT ERA + +The assemblage called the Natufian comes from the upper layers of a +number of caves in Palestine. Traces of its flint industry have also +turned up in Syria and Lebanon. We don’t know just how old it is. I +guess that it probably falls within five hundred years either way of +about 5000 B.C. + +Until recently, the people who produced the Natufian assemblage were +thought to have been only cave dwellers, but now at least three open +air Natufian sites have been briefly described. In their best-known +dwelling place, on Mount Carmel, the Natufian folk lived in the open +mouth of a large rock-shelter and on the terrace in front of it. On the +terrace, they had set at least two short curving lines of stones; but +these were hardly architecture; they seem more like benches or perhaps +the low walls of open pens. There were also one or two small clusters +of stones laid like paving, and a ring of stones around a hearth or +fireplace. One very round and regular basin-shaped depression had been +cut into the rocky floor of the terrace, and there were other less +regular basin-like depressions. In the newly reported open air sites, +there seem to have been huts with rounded corners. + +Most of the finds in the Natufian layer of the Mount Carmel cave were +flints. About 80 per cent of these flint tools were microliths made +by the regular working of tiny blades into various tools, some having +geometric forms. The larger flint tools included backed blades, burins, +scrapers, a few arrow points, some larger hacking or picking tools, and +one special type. This last was the sickle blade. + +We know a sickle blade of flint when we see one, because of a strange +polish or sheen which seems to develop on the cutting edge when the +blade has been used to cut grasses or grain, or--perhaps--reeds. In +the Natufian, we have even found the straight bone handles in which a +number of flint sickle blades were set in a line. + +There was a small industry in ground or pecked stone (that is, abraded +not chipped) in the Natufian. This included some pestle and mortar +fragments. The mortars are said to have a deep and narrow hole, +and some of the pestles show traces of red ochre. We are not sure +that these mortars and pestles were also used for grinding food. In +addition, there were one or two bits of carving in stone. + + +NATUFIAN ANTIQUITIES IN OTHER MATERIALS; BURIALS AND PEOPLE + +The Natufian industry in bone was quite rich. It included, beside the +sickle hafts mentioned above, points and harpoons, straight and curved +types of fish-hooks, awls, pins and needles, and a variety of beads and +pendants. There were also beads and pendants of pierced teeth and shell. + +A number of Natufian burials have been found in the caves; some burials +were grouped together in one grave. The people who were buried within +the Mount Carmel cave were laid on their backs in an extended position, +while those on the terrace seem to have been “flexed” (placed in their +graves in a curled-up position). This may mean no more than that it was +easier to dig a long hole in cave dirt than in the hard-packed dirt of +the terrace. The people often had some kind of object buried with them, +and several of the best collections of beads come from the burials. On +two of the skulls there were traces of elaborate head-dresses of shell +beads. + +[Illustration: SKETCH OF NATUFIAN ASSEMBLAGE + + MICROLITHS + ARCHITECTURE? + BURIAL + CHIPPED STONE + GROUND STONE + BONE] + +The animal bones of the Natufian layers show beasts of a “modern” type, +but with some differences from those of present-day Palestine. The +bones of the gazelle far outnumber those of the deer; since gazelles +like a much drier climate than deer, Palestine must then have had much +the same climate that it has today. Some of the animal bones were those +of large or dangerous beasts: the hyena, the bear, the wild boar, +and the leopard. But the Natufian people may have had the help of a +large domesticated dog. If our guess at a date for the Natufian is +right (about 7750 B.C.), this is an earlier dog than was that in the +Maglemosian of northern Europe. More recently, it has been reported +that a domesticated goat is also part of the Natufian finds. + +The study of the human bones from the Natufian burials is not yet +complete. Until Professor McCown’s study becomes available, we may note +Professor Coon’s assessment that these people were of a “basically +Mediterranean type.” + + +THE KARIM SHAHIR ASSEMBLAGE + +Karim Shahir differs from the Natufian sites in that it shows traces +of a temporary open site or encampment. It lies on the top of a bluff +in the Kurdish hill-country of northeastern Iraq. It was dug by Dr. +Bruce Howe of the expedition I directed in 1950-51 for the Oriental +Institute and the American Schools of Oriental Research. In 1954-55, +our expedition located another site, M’lefaat, with general resemblance +to Karim Shahir, but about a hundred miles north of it. In 1956, Dr. +Ralph Solecki located still another Karim Shahir type of site called +Zawi Chemi Shanidar. The Zawi Chemi site has a radiocarbon date of 8900 +± 300 B.C. + +Karim Shahir has evidence of only one very shallow level of occupation. +It was probably not lived on very long, although the people who lived +on it spread out over about three acres of area. In spots, the single +layer yielded great numbers of fist-sized cracked pieces of limestone, +which had been carried up from the bed of a stream at the bottom of the +bluff. We think these cracked stones had something to do with a kind of +architecture, but we were unable to find positive traces of hut plans. +At M’lefaat and Zawi Chemi, there were traces of rounded hut plans. + +As in the Natufian, the great bulk of small objects of the Karim Shahir +assemblage was in chipped flint. A large proportion of the flint tools +were microlithic bladelets and geometric forms. The flint sickle blade +was almost non-existent, being far scarcer than in the Natufian. The +people of Karim Shahir did a modest amount of work in the grinding of +stone; there were milling stone fragments of both the mortar and the +quern type, and stone hoes or axes with polished bits. Beads, pendants, +rings, and bracelets were made of finer quality stone. We found a few +simple points and needles of bone, and even two rather formless unbaked +clay figurines which seemed to be of animal form. + +[Illustration: SKETCH OF KARIM SHAHIR ASSEMBLAGE + + CHIPPED STONE + GROUND STONE + UNBAKED CLAY + SHELL + BONE + “ARCHITECTURE”] + +Karim Shahir did not yield direct evidence of the kind of vegetable +food its people ate. The animal bones showed a considerable +increase in the proportion of the bones of the species capable of +domestication--sheep, goat, cattle, horse, dog--as compared with animal +bones from the earlier cave sites of the area, which have a high +proportion of bones of wild forms like deer and gazelle. But we do not +know that any of the Karim Shahir animals were actually domesticated. +Some of them may have been, in an “incipient” way, but we have no means +at the moment that will tell us from the bones alone. + + +WERE THE NATUFIAN AND KARIM SHAHIR PEOPLES FOOD-PRODUCERS? + +It is clear that a great part of the food of the Natufian people +must have been hunted or collected. Shells of land, fresh-water, and +sea animals occur in their cave layers. The same is true as regards +Karim Shahir, save for sea shells. But on the other hand, we have +the sickles, the milling stones, the possible Natufian dog, and the +goat, and the general animal situation at Karim Shahir to hint at an +incipient approach to food-production. At Karim Shahir, there was the +tendency to settle down out in the open; this is echoed by the new +reports of open air Natufian sites. The large number of cracked stones +certainly indicates that it was worth the peoples’ while to have some +kind of structure, even if the site as a whole was short-lived. + +It is a part of my hunch that these things all point toward +food-production--that the hints we seek are there. But in the sense +that the peoples of the era of the primary village-farming community, +which we shall look at next, are fully food-producing, the Natufian +and Karim Shahir folk had not yet arrived. I think they were part of +a general build-up to full scale food-production. They were possibly +controlling a few animals of several kinds and perhaps one or two +plants, without realizing the full possibilities of this “control” as a +new way of life. + +This is why I think of the Karim Shahir and Natufian folk as being at +a level, or in an era, of incipient cultivation and domestication. But +we shall have to do a great deal more excavation in this range of time +before we’ll get the kind of positive information we need. + + +SUMMARY + +I am sorry that this chapter has had to be so much more about ideas +than about the archeological traces of prehistoric men themselves. +But the antiquities of the incipient era of cultivation and animal +domestication will not be spectacular, even when we do have them +excavated in quantity. Few museums will be interested in these +antiquities for exhibition purposes. The charred bits or impressions +of plants, the fragments of animal bone and shell, and the varied +clues to climate and environment will be as important as the artifacts +themselves. It will be the ideas to which these traces lead us that +will be important. I am sure that this unspectacular material--when we +have much more of it, and learn how to understand what it says--will +lead us to how and why answers about the first great change in human +history. + +We know the earliest village-farming communities appeared in western +Asia, in a nuclear area. We do not yet know why the Near Eastern +experiment came first, or why it didn’t happen earlier in some other +nuclear area. Apparently, the level of culture and the promise of the +natural environment were ready first in western Asia. The next sites +we look at will show a simple but effective food-production already +in existence. Without effective food-production and the settled +village-farming communities, civilization never could have followed. +How effective food-production came into being by the end of the +incipient era, is, I believe, one of the most fascinating questions any +archeologist could face. + +It now seems probable--from possibly two of the Palestinian sites with +varieties of the Natufian (Jericho and Nahal Oren)--that there were +one or more local Palestinian developments out of the Natufian into +later times. In the same way, what followed after the Karim Shahir type +of assemblage in northeastern Iraq was in some ways a reflection of +beginnings made at Karim Shahir and Zawi Chemi. + + + + +THE First Revolution + +[Illustration] + + +As the incipient era of cultivation and animal domestication passed +onward into the era of the primary village-farming community, the first +basic change in human economy was fully achieved. In southwestern Asia, +this seems to have taken place about nine thousand years ago. I am +going to restrict my description to this earliest Near Eastern case--I +do not know enough about the later comparable experiments in the Far +East and in the New World. Let us first, once again, think of the +contrast between food-collecting and food-producing as ways of life. + + +THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FOOD-COLLECTORS AND FOOD-PRODUCERS + +Childe used the word “revolution” because of the radical change that +took place in the habits and customs of man. Food-collectors--that is, +hunters, fishers, berry- and nut-gatherers--had to live in small groups +or bands, for they had to be ready to move wherever their food supply +moved. Not many people can be fed in this way in one area, and small +children and old folks are a burden. There is not enough food to store, +and it is not the kind that can be stored for long. + +Do you see how this all fits into a picture? Small groups of people +living now in this cave, now in that--or out in the open--as they moved +after the animals they hunted; no permanent villages, a few half-buried +huts at best; no breakable utensils; no pottery; no signs of anything +for clothing beyond the tools that were probably used to dress the +skins of animals; no time to think of much of anything but food and +protection and disposal of the dead when death did come: an existence +which takes nature as it finds it, which does little or nothing to +modify nature--all in all, a savage’s existence, and a very tough one. +A man who spends his whole life following animals just to kill them to +eat, or moving from one berry patch to another, is really living just +like an animal himself. + + +THE FOOD-PRODUCING ECONOMY + +Against this picture let me try to draw another--that of man’s life +after food-production had begun. His meat was stored “on the hoof,” +his grain in silos or great pottery jars. He lived in a house: it was +worth his while to build one, because he couldn’t move far from his +fields and flocks. In his neighborhood enough food could be grown +and enough animals bred so that many people were kept busy. They all +lived close to their flocks and fields, in a village. The village was +already of a fair size, and it was growing, too. Everybody had more to +eat; they were presumably all stronger, and there were more children. +Children and old men could shepherd the animals by day or help with +the lighter work in the fields. After the crops had been harvested the +younger men might go hunting and some of them would fish, but the food +they brought in was only an addition to the food in the village; the +villagers wouldn’t starve, even if the hunters and fishermen came home +empty-handed. + +There was more time to do different things, too. They began to modify +nature. They made pottery out of raw clay, and textiles out of hair +or fiber. People who became good at pottery-making traded their pots +for food and spent all of their time on pottery alone. Other people +were learning to weave cloth or to make new tools. There were already +people in the village who were becoming full-time craftsmen. + +Other things were changing, too. The villagers must have had +to agree on new rules for living together. The head man of the +village had problems different from those of the chief of the small +food-collectors’ band. If somebody’s flock of sheep spoiled a wheat +field, the owner wanted payment for the grain he lost. The chief of +the hunters was never bothered with such questions. Even the gods +had changed. The spirits and the magic that had been used by hunters +weren’t of any use to the villagers. They needed gods who would watch +over the fields and the flocks, and they eventually began to erect +buildings where their gods might dwell, and where the men who knew most +about the gods might live. + + +WAS FOOD-PRODUCTION A “REVOLUTION”? + +If you can see the difference between these two pictures--between +life in the food-collecting stage and life after food-production +had begun--you’ll see why Professor Childe speaks of a revolution. +By revolution, he doesn’t mean that it happened over night or that +it happened only once. We don’t know exactly how long it took. Some +people think that all these changes may have occurred in less than +500 years, but I doubt that. The incipient era was probably an affair +of some duration. Once the level of the village-farming community had +been established, however, things did begin to move very fast. By +six thousand years ago, the descendants of the first villagers had +developed irrigation and plow agriculture in the relatively rainless +Mesopotamian alluvium and were living in towns with temples. Relative +to the half million years of food-gathering which lay behind, this had +been achieved with truly revolutionary suddenness. + + +GAPS IN OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE NEAR EAST + +If you’ll look again at the chart (p. 111) you’ll see that I have +very few sites and assemblages to name in the incipient era of +cultivation and domestication, and not many in the earlier part of +the primary village-farming level either. Thanks in no small part +to the intelligent co-operation given foreign excavators by the +Iraq Directorate General of Antiquities, our understanding of the +sequence in Iraq is growing more complete. I shall use Iraq as my main +yard-stick here. But I am far from being able to show you a series of +Sears Roebuck catalogues, even century by century, for any part of +the nuclear area. There is still a great deal of earth to move, and a +great mass of material to recover and interpret before we even begin to +understand “how” and “why.” + +Perhaps here, because this kind of archeology is really my specialty, +you’ll excuse it if I become personal for a moment. I very much look +forward to having further part in closing some of the gaps in knowledge +of the Near East. This is not, as I’ve told you, the spectacular +range of Near Eastern archeology. There are no royal tombs, no gold, +no great buildings or sculpture, no writing, in fact nothing to +excite the normal museum at all. Nevertheless it is a range which, +idea-wise, gives the archeologist tremendous satisfaction. The country +of the hilly flanks is an exciting combination of green grasslands +and mountainous ridges. The Kurds, who inhabit the part of the area +in which I’ve worked most recently, are an extremely interesting and +hospitable people. Archeologists don’t become rich, but I’ll forego +the Cadillac for any bright spring morning in the Kurdish hills, on a +good site with a happy crew of workmen and an interested and efficient +staff. It is probably impossible to convey the full feeling which life +on such a dig holds--halcyon days for the body and acute pleasurable +stimulation for the mind. Old things coming newly out of the good dirt, +and the pieces of the human puzzle fitting into place! I think I am +an honest man; I cannot tell you that I am sorry the job is not yet +finished and that there are still gaps in this part of the Near Eastern +archeological sequence. + + +EARLIEST SITES OF THE VILLAGE FARMERS + +So far, the Karim Shahir type of assemblage, which we looked at in the +last chapter, is the earliest material available in what I take to +be the nuclear area. We do not believe that Karim Shahir was a village +site proper: it looks more like the traces of a temporary encampment. +Two caves, called Belt and Hotu, which are outside the nuclear area +and down on the foreshore of the Caspian Sea, have been excavated +by Professor Coon. These probably belong in the later extension of +the terminal era of food-gathering; in their upper layers are traits +like the use of pottery borrowed from the more developed era of the +same time in the nuclear area. The same general explanation doubtless +holds true for certain materials in Egypt, along the upper Nile and in +the Kharga oasis: these materials, called Sebilian III, the Khartoum +“neolithic,” and the Khargan microlithic, are from surface sites, +not from caves. The chart (p. 111) shows where I would place these +materials in era and time. + +[Illustration: THE HILLY FLANKS OF THE CRESCENT AND EARLY SITES OF THE +NEAR EAST] + +Both M’lefaat and Dr. Solecki’s Zawi Chemi Shanidar site appear to have +been slightly more “settled in” than was Karim Shahir itself. But I do +not think they belong to the era of farming-villages proper. The first +site of this era, in the hills of Iraqi Kurdistan, is Jarmo, on which +we have spent three seasons of work. Following Jarmo comes a variety of +sites and assemblages which lie along the hilly flanks of the crescent +and just below it. I am going to describe and illustrate some of these +for you. + +Since not very much archeological excavation has yet been done on sites +of this range of time, I shall have to mention the names of certain +single sites which now alone stand for an assemblage. This does not +mean that I think the individual sites I mention were unique. In the +times when their various cultures flourished, there must have been +many little villages which shared the same general assemblage. We are +only now beginning to locate them again. Thus, if I speak of Jarmo, +or Jericho, or Sialk as single examples of their particular kinds of +assemblages, I don’t mean that they were unique at all. I think I could +take you to the sites of at least three more Jarmos, within twenty +miles of the original one. They are there, but they simply haven’t yet +been excavated. In 1956, a Danish expedition discovered material of +Jarmo type at Shimshara, only two dozen miles northeast of Jarmo, and +below an assemblage of Hassunan type (which I shall describe presently). + + +THE GAP BETWEEN KARIM SHAHIR AND JARMO + +As we see the matter now, there is probably still a gap in the +available archeological record between the Karim Shahir-M’lefaat-Zawi +Chemi group (of the incipient era) and that of Jarmo (of the +village-farming era). Although some items of the Jarmo type materials +do reflect the beginnings of traditions set in the Karim Shahir group +(see p. 120), there is not a clear continuity. Moreover--to the +degree that we may trust a few radiocarbon dates--there would appear +to be around two thousand years of difference in time. The single +available Zawi Chemi “date” is 8900 ± 300 B.C.; the most reasonable +group of “dates” from Jarmo average to about 6750 ± 200 B.C. I am +uncertain about this two thousand years--I do not think it can have +been so long. + +This suggests that we still have much work to do in Iraq. You can +imagine how earnestly we await the return of political stability in the +Republic of Iraq. + + +JARMO, IN THE KURDISH HILLS, IRAQ + +The site of Jarmo has a depth of deposit of about twenty-seven feet, +and approximately a dozen layers of architectural renovation and +change. Nevertheless it is a “one period” site: its assemblage remains +essentially the same throughout, although one or two new items are +added in later levels. It covers about four acres of the top of a +bluff, below which runs a small stream. Jarmo lies in the hill country +east of the modern oil town of Kirkuk. The Iraq Directorate General of +Antiquities suggested that we look at it in 1948, and we have had three +seasons of digging on it since. + +The people of Jarmo grew the barley plant and two different kinds of +wheat. They made flint sickles with which to reap their grain, mortars +or querns on which to crack it, ovens in which it might be parched, and +stone bowls out of which they might eat their porridge. We are sure +that they had the domesticated goat, but Professor Reed (the staff +zoologist) is not convinced that the bones of the other potentially +domesticable animals of Jarmo--sheep, cattle, pig, horse, dog--show +sure signs of domestication. We had first thought that all of these +animals were domesticated ones, but Reed feels he must find out much +more before he can be sure. As well as their grain and the meat from +their animals, the people of Jarmo consumed great quantities of land +snails. Botanically, the Jarmo wheat stands about half way between +fully bred wheat and the wild forms. + + +ARCHITECTURE: HALL-MARK OF THE VILLAGE + +The sure sign of the village proper is in its traces of architectural +permanence. The houses of Jarmo were only the size of a small cottage +by our standards, but each was provided with several rectangular rooms. +The walls of the houses were made of puddled mud, often set on crude +foundations of stone. (The puddled mud wall, which the Arabs call +_touf_, is built by laying a three to six inch course of soft mud, +letting this sun-dry for a day or two, then adding the next course, +etc.) The village probably looked much like the simple Kurdish farming +village of today, with its mud-walled houses and low mud-on-brush +roofs. I doubt that the Jarmo village had more than twenty houses at +any one moment of its existence. Today, an average of about seven +people live in a comparable Kurdish house; probably the population of +Jarmo was about 150 people. + +[Illustration: SKETCH OF JARMO ASSEMBLAGE + + CHIPPED STONE + UNBAKED CLAY + GROUND STONE + POTTERY _UPPER THIRD OF SITE ONLY._ + REED MATTING + BONE + ARCHITECTURE] + +It is interesting that portable pottery does not appear until the +last third of the life of the Jarmo village. Throughout the duration +of the village, however, its people had experimented with the plastic +qualities of clay. They modeled little figurines of animals and of +human beings in clay; one type of human figurine they favored was that +of a markedly pregnant woman, probably the expression of some sort of +fertility spirit. They provided their house floors with baked-in-place +depressions, either as basins or hearths, and later with domed ovens of +clay. As we’ve noted, the houses themselves were of clay or mud; one +could almost say they were built up like a house-sized pot. Then, +finally, the idea of making portable pottery itself appeared, although +I very much doubt that the people of the Jarmo village discovered the +art. + +On the other hand, the old tradition of making flint blades and +microlithic tools was still very strong at Jarmo. The sickle-blade was +made in quantities, but so also were many of the much older tool types. +Strangely enough, it is within this age-old category of chipped stone +tools that we see one of the clearest pointers to a newer age. Many of +the Jarmo chipped stone tools--microliths--were made of obsidian, a +black volcanic natural glass. The obsidian beds nearest to Jarmo are +over three hundred miles to the north. Already a bulk carrying trade +had been established--the forerunner of commerce--and the routes were +set by which, in later times, the metal trade was to move. + +There are now twelve radioactive carbon “dates” from Jarmo. The most +reasonable cluster of determinations averages to about 6750 ± 200 +B.C., although there is a completely unreasonable range of “dates” +running from 3250 to 9250 B.C.! _If_ I am right in what I take to be +“reasonable,” the first flush of the food-producing revolution had been +achieved almost nine thousand years ago. + + +HASSUNA, IN UPPER MESOPOTAMIAN IRAQ + +We are not sure just how soon after Jarmo the next assemblage of Iraqi +material is to be placed. I do not think the time was long, and there +are a few hints that detailed habits in the making of pottery and +ground stone tools were actually continued from Jarmo times into the +time of the next full assemblage. This is called after a site named +Hassuna, a few miles to the south and west of modern Mosul. We also +have Hassunan type materials from several other sites in the same +general region. It is probably too soon to make generalizations about +it, but the Hassunan sites seem to cluster at slightly lower elevations +than those we have been talking about so far. + +The catalogue of the Hassuna assemblage is of course more full and +elaborate than that of Jarmo. The Iraqi government’s archeologists +who dug Hassuna itself, exposed evidence of increasing architectural +know-how. The walls of houses were still formed of puddled mud; +sun-dried bricks appear only in later periods. There were now several +different ways of making and decorating pottery vessels. One style of +pottery painting, called the Samarran style, is an extremely handsome +one and must have required a great deal of concentration and excellence +of draftsmanship. On the other hand, the old habits for the preparation +of good chipped stone tools--still apparent at Jarmo--seem to have +largely disappeared by Hassunan times. The flint work of the Hassunan +catalogue is, by and large, a wretched affair. We might guess that the +kinaesthetic concentration of the Hassuna craftsmen now went into other +categories; that is, they suddenly discovered they might have more fun +working with the newer materials. It’s a shame, for example, that none +of their weaving is preserved for us. + +The two available radiocarbon determinations from Hassunan contexts +stand at about 5100 and 5600 B.C. ± 250 years. + + +OTHER EARLY VILLAGE SITES IN THE NUCLEAR AREA + +I’ll now name and very briefly describe a few of the other early +village assemblages either in or adjacent to the hilly flanks of the +crescent. Unfortunately, we do not have radioactive carbon dates for +many of these materials. We may guess that some particular assemblage, +roughly comparable to that of Hassuna, for example, must reflect a +culture which lived at just about the same time as that of Hassuna. We +do this guessing on the basis of the general similarity and degree of +complexity of the Sears Roebuck catalogues of the particular assemblage +and that of Hassuna. We suppose that for sites near at hand and of a +comparable cultural level, as indicated by their generally similar +assemblages, the dating must be about the same. We may also know that +in a general stratigraphic sense, the sites in question may both appear +at the bottom of the ascending village sequence in their respective +areas. Without a number of consistent radioactive carbon dates, we +cannot be precise about priorities. + +[Illustration: SKETCH OF HASSUNA ASSEMBLAGE + + POTTERY + POTTERY OBJECTS + CHIPPED STONE + BONE + GROUND STONE + ARCHITECTURE + REED MATTING + BURIAL] + +The ancient mound at Jericho, in the Dead Sea valley in Palestine, +yields some very interesting material. Its catalogue somewhat resembles +that of Jarmo, especially in the sense that there is a fair depth +of deposit without portable pottery vessels. On the other hand, the +architecture of Jericho is surprisingly complex, with traces of massive +stone fortification walls and the general use of formed sun-dried +mud brick. Jericho lies in a somewhat strange and tropically lush +ecological niche, some seven hundred feet below sea level; it is +geographically within the hilly-flanks zone but environmentally not +part of it. + +Several radiocarbon “dates” for Jericho fall within the range of those +I find reasonable for Jarmo, and their internal statistical consistency +is far better than that for the Jarmo determinations. It is not yet +clear exactly what this means. + +The mound at Jericho (Tell es-Sultan) contains a remarkably +fine sequence, which perhaps does not have the gap we noted in +Iraqi-Kurdistan between the Karim Shahir group and Jarmo. While I am +not sure that the Jericho sequence will prove valid for those parts +of Palestine outside the special Dead Sea environmental niche, the +sequence does appear to proceed from the local variety of Natufian into +that of a very well settled community. So far, we have little direct +evidence for the food-production basis upon which the Jericho people +subsisted. + +There is an early village assemblage with strong characteristics of its +own in the land bordering the northeast corner of the Mediterranean +Sea, where Syria and the Cilician province of Turkey join. This early +Syro-Cilician assemblage must represent a general cultural pattern +which was at least in part contemporary with that of the Hassuna +assemblage. These materials from the bases of the mounds at Mersin, and +from Judaidah in the Amouq plain, as well as from a few other sites, +represent the remains of true villages. The walls of their houses were +built of puddled mud, but some of the house foundations were of stone. +Several different kinds of pottery were made by the people of these +villages. None of it resembles the pottery from Hassuna or from the +upper levels of Jarmo or Jericho. The Syro-Cilician people had not +lost their touch at working flint. An important southern variation of +the Syro-Cilician assemblage has been cleared recently at Byblos, a +port town famous in later Phoenician times. There are three radiocarbon +determinations which suggest that the time range for these developments +was in the sixth or early fifth millennium B.C. + +It would be fascinating to search for traces of even earlier +village-farming communities and for the remains of the incipient +cultivation era, in the Syro-Cilician region. + + +THE IRANIAN PLATEAU AND THE NILE VALLEY + +The map on page 125 shows some sites which lie either outside or in +an extension of the hilly-flanks zone proper. From the base of the +great mound at Sialk on the Iranian plateau came an assemblage of +early village material, generally similar, in the kinds of things it +contained, to the catalogues of Hassuna and Judaidah. The details of +how things were made are different; the Sialk assemblage represents +still another cultural pattern. I suspect it appeared a bit later +in time than did that of Hassuna. There is an important new item in +the Sialk catalogue. The Sialk people made small drills or pins of +hammered copper. Thus the metallurgist’s specialized craft had made its +appearance. + +There is at least one very early Iranian site on the inward slopes +of the hilly-flanks zone. It is the earlier of two mounds at a place +called Bakun, in southwestern Iran; the results of the excavations +there are not yet published and we only know of its coarse and +primitive pottery. I only mention Bakun because it helps us to plot the +extent of the hilly-flanks zone villages on the map. + +The Nile Valley lies beyond the peculiar environmental zone of the +hilly flanks of the crescent, and it is probable that the earliest +village-farming communities in Egypt were established by a few people +who wandered into the Nile delta area from the nuclear area. The +assemblage which is most closely comparable to the catalogue of Hassuna +or Judaidah, for example, is that from little settlements along the +shore of the Fayum lake. The Fayum materials come mainly from grain +bins or silos. Another site, Merimde, in the western part of the Nile +delta, shows the remains of a true village, but it may be slightly +later than the settlement of the Fayum. There are radioactive carbon +“dates” for the Fayum materials at about 4275 B.C. ± 320 years, which +is almost fifteen hundred years later than the determinations suggested +for the Hassunan or Syro-Cilician assemblages. I suspect that this +is a somewhat over-extended indication of the time it took for the +generalized cultural pattern of village-farming community life to +spread from the nuclear area down into Egypt, but as yet we have no way +of testing these matters. + +In this same vein, we have two radioactive carbon dates for an +assemblage from sites near Khartoum in the Sudan, best represented by +the mound called Shaheinab. The Shaheinab catalogue roughly corresponds +to that of the Fayum; the distance between the two places, as the Nile +flows, is roughly 1,500 miles. Thus it took almost a thousand years for +the new way of life to be carried as far south into Africa as Khartoum; +the two Shaheinab “dates” average about 3300 B.C. ± 400 years. + +If the movement was up the Nile (southward), as these dates suggest, +then I suspect that the earliest available village material of middle +Egypt, the so-called Tasian, is also later than that of the Fayum. The +Tasian materials come from a few graves near a village called Deir +Tasa, and I have an uncomfortable feeling that the Tasian “assemblage” +may be mainly an artificial selection of poor examples of objects which +belong in the following range of time. + + +SPREAD IN TIME AND SPACE + +There are now two things we can do; in fact, we have already begun to +do them. We can watch the spread of the new way of life upward through +time in the nuclear area. We can also see how the new way of life +spread outward in space from the nuclear area, as time went on. There +is good archeological evidence that both these processes took place. +For the hill country of northeastern Iraq, in the nuclear area, we +have already noticed how the succession (still with gaps) from Karim +Shahir, through M’lefaat and Jarmo, to Hassuna can be charted (see +chart, p. 111). In the next chapter, we shall continue this charting +and description of what happened in Iraq upward through time. We also +watched traces of the new way of life move through space up the Nile +into Africa, to reach Khartoum in the Sudan some thirty-five hundred +years later than we had seen it at Jarmo or Jericho. We caught glimpses +of it in the Fayum and perhaps at Tasa along the way. + +For the remainder of this chapter, I shall try to suggest briefly for +you the directions taken by the spread of the new way of life from the +nuclear area in the Near East. First, let me make clear again that +I _do not_ believe that the village-farming community way of life +was invented only once and in the Near East. It seems to me that the +evidence is very clear that a separate experiment arose in the New +World. For China, the question of independence or borrowing--in the +appearance of the village-farming community there--is still an open +one. In the last chapter, we noted the probability of an independent +nuclear area in southeastern Asia. Professor Carl Sauer strongly +champions the great importance of this area as _the_ original center +of agricultural pursuits, as a kind of “cradle” of all incipient eras +of the Old World at least. While there is certainly not the slightest +archeological evidence to allow us to go that far, we may easily expect +that an early southeast Asian development would have been felt in +China. However, the appearance of the village-farming community in the +northwest of India, at least, seems to have depended on the earlier +development in the Near East. It is also probable that ideas of the new +way of life moved well beyond Khartoum in Africa. + + +THE SPREAD OF THE VILLAGE-FARMING COMMUNITY WAY OF LIFE INTO EUROPE + +How about Europe? I won’t give you many details. You can easily imagine +that the late prehistoric prelude to European history is a complicated +affair. We all know very well how complicated an area Europe is now, +with its welter of different languages and cultures. Remember, however, +that a great deal of archeology has been done on the late prehistory of +Europe, and very little on that of further Asia and Africa. If we knew +as much about these areas as we do of Europe, I expect we’d find them +just as complicated. + +This much is clear for Europe, as far as the spread of the +village-community way of life is concerned. The general idea and much +of the know-how and the basic tools of food-production moved from the +Near East to Europe. So did the plants and animals which had been +domesticated; they were not naturally at home in Europe, as they were +in western Asia. I do not, of course, mean that there were traveling +salesmen who carried these ideas and things to Europe with a commercial +gleam in their eyes. The process took time, and the ideas and things +must have been passed on from one group of people to the next. There +was also some actual movement of peoples, but we don’t know the size of +the groups that moved. + +The story of the “colonization” of Europe by the first farmers is +thus one of (1) the movement from the eastern Mediterranean lands +of some people who were farmers; (2) the spread of ideas and things +beyond the Near East itself and beyond the paths along which the +“colonists” moved; and (3) the adaptations of the ideas and things +by the indigenous “Forest folk”, about whose “receptiveness” Professor +Mathiassen speaks (p. 97). It is important to note that the resulting +cultures in the new European environment were European, not Near +Eastern. The late Professor Childe remarked that “the peoples of the +West were not slavish imitators; they adapted the gifts from the East +... into a new and organic whole capable of developing on its own +original lines.” + + +THE WAYS TO EUROPE + +Suppose we want to follow the traces of those earliest village-farmers +who did travel from western Asia into Europe. Let us start from +Syro-Cilicia, that part of the hilly-flanks zone proper which lies in +the very northeastern corner of the Mediterranean. Three ways would be +open to us (of course we could not be worried about permission from the +Soviet authorities!). We would go north, or north and slightly east, +across Anatolian Turkey, and skirt along either shore of the Black Sea +or even to the east of the Caucasus Mountains along the Caspian Sea, +to reach the plains of Ukrainian Russia. From here, we could march +across eastern Europe to the Baltic and Scandinavia, or even hook back +southwestward to Atlantic Europe. + +Our second way from Syro-Cilicia would also lie over Anatolia, to the +northwest, where we would have to swim or raft ourselves over the +Dardanelles or the Bosphorus to the European shore. Then we would bear +left toward Greece, but some of us might turn right again in Macedonia, +going up the valley of the Vardar River to its divide and on down +the valley of the Morava beyond, to reach the Danube near Belgrade +in Jugoslavia. Here we would turn left, following the great river +valley of the Danube up into central Europe. We would have a number of +tributary valleys to explore, or we could cross the divide and go down +the valley of the Rhine to the North Sea. + +Our third way from Syro-Cilicia would be by sea. We would coast along +southern Anatolia and visit Cyprus, Crete, and the Aegean islands on +our way to Greece, where, in the north, we might meet some of those who +had taken the second route. From Greece, we would sail on to Italy and +the western isles, to reach southern France and the coasts of Spain. +Eventually a few of us would sail up the Atlantic coast of Europe, to +reach western Britain and even Ireland. + +[Illustration: PROBABLE ROUTES AND TIMING IN THE SPREAD OF THE +VILLAGE-FARMING COMMUNITY WAY OF LIFE FROM THE NEAR EAST TO EUROPE] + +Of course none of us could ever take these journeys as the first +farmers took them, since the whole course of each journey must have +lasted many lifetimes. The date given to the assemblage called Windmill +Hill, the earliest known trace of village-farming communities in +England, is about 2500 B.C. I would expect about 5500 B.C. to be a +safe date to give for the well-developed early village communities of +Syro-Cilicia. We suspect that the spread throughout Europe did not +proceed at an even rate. Professor Piggott writes that “at a date +probably about 2600 B.C., simple agricultural communities were being +established in Spain and southern France, and from the latter region a +spread northwards can be traced ... from points on the French seaboard +of the [English] Channel ... there were emigrations of a certain number +of these tribes by boat, across to the chalk lands of Wessex and Sussex +[in England], probably not more than three or four generations later +than the formation of the south French colonies.” + +New radiocarbon determinations are becoming available all the +time--already several suggest that the food-producing way of life +had reached the lower Rhine and Holland by 4000 B.C. But not all +prehistorians accept these “dates,” so I do not show them on my map +(p. 139). + + +THE EARLIEST FARMERS OF ENGLAND + +To describe the later prehistory of all Europe for you would take +another book and a much larger one than this is. Therefore, I have +decided to give you only a few impressions of the later prehistory of +Britain. Of course the British Isles lie at the other end of Europe +from our base-line in western Asia. Also, they received influences +along at least two of the three ways in which the new way of life +moved into Europe. We will look at more of their late prehistory in a +following chapter: here, I shall speak only of the first farmers. + +The assemblage called Windmill Hill, which appears in the south of +England, exhibits three different kinds of structures, evidence of +grain-growing and of stock-breeding, and some distinctive types of +pottery and stone implements. The most remarkable type of structure +is the earthwork enclosures which seem to have served as seasonal +cattle corrals. These enclosures were roughly circular, reached over +a thousand feet in diameter, and sometimes included two or three +concentric sets of banks and ditches. Traces of oblong timber houses +have been found, but not within the enclosures. The second type of +structure is mine-shafts, dug down into the chalk beds where good +flint for the making of axes or hoes could be found. The third type +of structure is long simple mounds or “unchambered barrows,” in one +end of which burials were made. It has been commonly believed that the +Windmill Hill assemblage belonged entirely to the cultural tradition +which moved up through France to the Channel. Professor Piggott is now +convinced, however, that important elements of Windmill Hill stem from +northern Germany and Denmark--products of the first way into Europe +from the east. + +The archeological traces of a second early culture are to be found +in the west of England, western and northern Scotland, and most of +Ireland. The bearers of this culture had come up the Atlantic coast +by sea from southern France and Spain. The evidence they have left us +consists mainly of tombs and the contents of tombs, with only very +rare settlement sites. The tombs were of some size and received the +bodies of many people. The tombs themselves were built of stone, heaped +over with earth; the stones enclosed a passage to a central chamber +(“passage graves”), or to a simple long gallery, along the sides of +which the bodies were laid (“gallery graves”). The general type of +construction is called “megalithic” (= great stone), and the whole +earth-mounded structure is often called a _barrow_. Since many have +proper chambers, in one sense or another, we used the term “unchambered +barrow” above to distinguish those of the Windmill Hill type from these +megalithic structures. There is some evidence for sacrifice, libations, +and ceremonial fires, and it is clear that some form of community +ritual was focused on the megalithic tombs. + +The cultures of the people who produced the Windmill Hill assemblage +and of those who made the megalithic tombs flourished, at least in +part, at the same time. Although the distributions of the two different +types of archeological traces are in quite different parts of the +country, there is Windmill Hill pottery in some of the megalithic +tombs. But the tombs also contain pottery which seems to have arrived +with the tomb builders themselves. + +The third early British group of antiquities of this general time +(following 2500 B.C.) comes from sites in southern and eastern England. +It is not so certain that the people who made this assemblage, called +Peterborough, were actually farmers. While they may on occasion have +practiced a simple agriculture, many items of their assemblage link +them closely with that of the “Forest folk” of earlier times in +England and in the Baltic countries. Their pottery is decorated with +impressions of cords and is quite different from that of Windmill Hill +and the megalithic builders. In addition, the distribution of their +finds extends into eastern Britain, where the other cultures have left +no trace. The Peterborough people had villages with semi-subterranean +huts, and the bones of oxen, pigs, and sheep have been found in a few +of these. On the whole, however, hunting and fishing seem to have been +their vital occupations. They also established trade routes especially +to acquire the raw material for stone axes. + +A probably slightly later culture, whose traces are best known from +Skara Brae on Orkney, also had its roots in those cultures of the +Baltic area which fused out of the meeting of the “Forest folk” and +the peoples who took the eastern way into Europe. Skara Brae is very +well preserved, having been built of thin stone slabs about which +dune-sand drifted after the village died. The individual houses, the +bedsteads, the shelves, the chests for clothes and oddments--all built +of thin stone-slabs--may still be seen in place. But the Skara Brae +people lived entirely by sheep- and cattle-breeding, and by catching +shellfish. Neither grain nor the instruments of agriculture appeared at +Skara Brae. + + +THE EUROPEAN ACHIEVEMENT + +The above is only a very brief description of what went on in Britain +with the arrival of the first farmers. There are many interesting +details which I have omitted in order to shorten the story. + +I believe some of the difficulty we have in understanding the +establishment of the first farming communities in Europe is with +the word “colonization.” We have a natural tendency to think of +“colonization” as it has happened within the last few centuries. In the +case of the colonization of the Americas, for example, the colonists +came relatively quickly, and in increasingly vast numbers. They had +vastly superior technical, political, and war-making skills, compared +with those of the Indians. There was not much mixing with the Indians. +The case in Europe five or six thousand years ago must have been very +different. I wonder if it is even proper to call people “colonists” +who move some miles to a new region, settle down and farm it for some +years, then move on again, generation after generation? The ideas and +the things which these new people carried were only _potentially_ +superior. The ideas and things and the people had to prove themselves +in their adaptation to each new environment. Once this was done another +link to the chain would be added, and then the forest-dwellers and +other indigenous folk of Europe along the way might accept the new +ideas and things. It is quite reasonable to expect that there must have +been much mixture of the migrants and the indigenes along the way; the +Peterborough and Skara Brae assemblages we mentioned above would seem +to be clear traces of such fused cultures. Sometimes, especially if the +migrants were moving by boat, long distances may have been covered in +a short time. Remember, however, we seem to have about three thousand +years between the early Syro-Cilician villages and Windmill Hill. + +Let me repeat Professor Childe again. “The peoples of the West were +not slavish imitators: they adapted the gifts from the East ... into +a new and organic whole capable of developing on its own original +lines.” Childe is of course completely conscious of the fact that his +“peoples of the West” were in part the descendants of migrants who came +originally from the “East,” bringing their “gifts” with them. This +was the late prehistoric achievement of Europe--to take new ideas and +things and some migrant peoples and, by mixing them with the old in its +own environments, to forge a new and unique series of cultures. + +What we know of the ways of men suggests to us that when the details +of the later prehistory of further Asia and Africa are learned, their +stories will be just as exciting. + + + + +THE Conquest of Civilization + +[Illustration] + + +Now we must return to the Near East again. We are coming to the point +where history is about to begin. I am going to stick pretty close +to Iraq and Egypt in this chapter. These countries will perhaps be +the most interesting to most of us, for the foundations of western +civilization were laid in the river lands of the Tigris and Euphrates +and of the Nile. I shall probably stick closest of all to Iraq, because +things first happened there and also because I know it best. + +There is another interesting thing, too. We have seen that the first +experiment in village-farming took place in the Near East. So did +the first experiment in civilization. Both experiments “took.” The +traditions we live by today are based, ultimately, on those ancient +beginnings in food-production and civilization in the Near East. + + +WHAT “CIVILIZATION” MEANS + +I shall not try to define “civilization” for you; rather, I shall +tell you what the word brings to my mind. To me civilization means +urbanization: the fact that there are cities. It means a formal +political set-up--that there are kings or governing bodies that the +people have set up. It means formal laws--rules of conduct--which the +government (if not the people) believes are necessary. It probably +means that there are formalized projects--roads, harbors, irrigation +canals, and the like--and also some sort of army or police force +to protect them. It means quite new and different art forms. It +also usually means there is writing. (The people of the Andes--the +Incas--had everything which goes to make up a civilization but formal +writing. I can see no reason to say they were not civilized.) Finally, +as the late Professor Redfield reminded us, civilization seems to bring +with it the dawn of a new kind of moral order. + +In different civilizations, there may be important differences in the +way such things as the above are managed. In early civilizations, it is +usual to find religion very closely tied in with government, law, and +so forth. The king may also be a high priest, or he may even be thought +of as a god. The laws are usually thought to have been given to the +people by the gods. The temples are protected just as carefully as the +other projects. + + +CIVILIZATION IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT FOOD-PRODUCTION + +Civilizations have to be made up of many people. Some of the people +live in the country; some live in very large towns or cities. Classes +of society have begun. There are officials and government people; there +are priests or religious officials; there are merchants and traders; +there are craftsmen, metal-workers, potters, builders, and so on; there +are also farmers, and these are the people who produce the food for the +whole population. It must be obvious that civilization cannot exist +without food-production and that food-production must also be at a +pretty efficient level of village-farming before civilization can even +begin. + +But people can be food-producing without being civilized. In many +parts of the world this is still the case. When the white men first +came to America, the Indians in most parts of this hemisphere were +food-producers. They grew corn, potatoes, tomatoes, squash, and many +other things the white men had never eaten before. But only the Aztecs +of Mexico, the Mayas of Yucatan and Guatemala, and the Incas of the +Andes were civilized. + + +WHY DIDN’T CIVILIZATION COME TO ALL FOOD-PRODUCERS? + +Once you have food-production, even at the well-advanced level of +the village-farming community, what else has to happen before you +get civilization? Many men have asked this question and have failed +to give a full and satisfactory answer. There is probably no _one_ +answer. I shall give you my own idea about how civilization _may_ have +come about in the Near East alone. Remember, it is only a guess--a +putting together of hunches from incomplete evidence. It is _not_ meant +to explain how civilization began in any of the other areas--China, +southeast Asia, the Americas--where other early experiments in +civilization went on. The details in those areas are quite different. +Whether certain general principles hold, for the appearance of any +early civilization, is still an open and very interesting question. + + +WHERE CIVILIZATION FIRST APPEARED IN THE NEAR EAST + +You remember that our earliest village-farming communities lay along +the hilly flanks of a great “crescent.” (See map on p. 125.) +Professor Breasted’s “fertile crescent” emphasized the rich river +valleys of the Nile and the Tigris-Euphrates Rivers. Our hilly-flanks +area of the crescent zone arches up from Egypt through Palestine and +Syria, along southern Turkey into northern Iraq, and down along the +southwestern fringe of Iran. The earliest food-producing villages we +know already existed in this area by about 6750 B.C. (± 200 years). + +Now notice that this hilly-flanks zone does not include southern +Mesopotamia, the alluvial land of the lower Tigris and Euphrates in +Iraq, or the Nile Valley proper. The earliest known villages of classic +Mesopotamia and Egypt seem to appear fifteen hundred or more years +after those of the hilly-flanks zone. For example, the early Fayum +village which lies near a lake west of the Nile Valley proper (see p. +135) has a radiocarbon date of 4275 B.C. ± 320 years. It was in the +river lands, however, that the immediate beginnings of civilization +were made. + +We know that by about 3200 B.C. the Early Dynastic period had begun +in southern Mesopotamia. The beginnings of writing go back several +hundred years earlier, but we can safely say that civilization had +begun in Mesopotamia by 3200 B.C. In Egypt, the beginning of the First +Dynasty is slightly later, at about 3100 B.C., and writing probably +did not appear much earlier. There is no question but that history and +civilization were well under way in both Mesopotamia and Egypt by 3000 +B.C.--about five thousand years ago. + + +THE HILLY-FLANKS ZONE VERSUS THE RIVER LANDS + +Why did these two civilizations spring up in these two river +lands which apparently were not even part of the area where the +village-farming community began? Why didn’t we have the first +civilizations in Palestine, Syria, north Iraq, or Iran, where we’re +sure food-production had had a long time to develop? I think the +probable answer gives a clue to the ways in which civilization began in +Egypt and Mesopotamia. + +The land in the hilly flanks is of a sort which people can farm without +too much trouble. There is a fairly fertile coastal strip in Palestine +and Syria. There are pleasant mountain slopes, streams running out to +the sea, and rain, at least in the winter months. The rain belt and the +foothills of the Turkish mountains also extend to northern Iraq and on +to the Iranian plateau. The Iranian plateau has its mountain valleys, +streams, and some rain. These hilly flanks of the “crescent,” through +most of its arc, are almost made-to-order for beginning farmers. The +grassy slopes of the higher hills would be pasture for their herds +and flocks. As soon as the earliest experiments with agriculture and +domestic animals had been successful, a pleasant living could be +made--and without too much trouble. + +I should add here again, that our evidence points increasingly to a +climate for those times which is very little different from that for +the area today. Now look at Egypt and southern Mesopotamia. Both are +lands without rain, for all intents and purposes. Both are lands with +rivers that have laid down very fertile soil--soil perhaps superior to +that in the hilly flanks. But in both lands, the rivers are of no great +aid without some control. + +The Nile floods its banks once a year, in late September or early +October. It not only soaks the narrow fertile strip of land on either +side; it lays down a fresh layer of new soil each year. Beyond the +fertile strip on either side rise great cliffs, and behind them is the +desert. In its natural, uncontrolled state, the yearly flood of the +Nile must have caused short-lived swamps that were full of crocodiles. +After a short time, the flood level would have dropped, the water and +the crocodiles would have run back into the river, and the swamp plants +would have become parched and dry. + +The Tigris and the Euphrates of Mesopotamia are less likely to flood +regularly than the Nile. The Tigris has a shorter and straighter course +than the Euphrates; it is also the more violent river. Its banks are +high, and when the snows melt and flow into all of its tributary rivers +it is swift and dangerous. The Euphrates has a much longer and more +curving course and few important tributaries. Its banks are lower and +it is less likely to flood dangerously. The land on either side and +between the two rivers is very fertile, south of the modern city of +Baghdad. Unlike the Nile Valley, neither the Tigris nor the Euphrates +is flanked by cliffs. The land on either side of the rivers stretches +out for miles and is not much rougher than a poor tennis court. + + +THE RIVERS MUST BE CONTROLLED + +The real trick in both Egypt and Mesopotamia is to make the rivers work +for you. In Egypt, this is a matter of building dikes and reservoirs +that will catch and hold the Nile flood. In this way, the water is held +and allowed to run off over the fields as it is needed. In Mesopotamia, +it is a matter of taking advantage of natural river channels and branch +channels, and of leading ditches from these onto the fields. + +Obviously, we can no longer find the first dikes or reservoirs of +the Nile Valley, or the first canals or ditches of Mesopotamia. The +same land has been lived on far too long for any traces of the first +attempts to be left; or, especially in Egypt, it has been covered by +the yearly deposits of silt, dropped by the river floods. But we’re +pretty sure the first food-producers of Egypt and southern Mesopotamia +must have made such dikes, canals, and ditches. In the first place, +there can’t have been enough rain for them to grow things otherwise. +In the second place, the patterns for such projects seem to have been +pretty well set by historic times. + + +CONTROL OF THE RIVERS THE BUSINESS OF EVERYONE + +Here, then, is a _part_ of the reason why civilization grew in Egypt +and Mesopotamia first--not in Palestine, Syria, or Iran. In the latter +areas, people could manage to produce their food as individuals. It +wasn’t too hard; there were rain and some streams, and good pasturage +for the animals even if a crop or two went wrong. In Egypt and +Mesopotamia, people had to put in a much greater amount of work, and +this work couldn’t be individual work. Whole villages or groups of +people had to turn out to fix dikes or dig ditches. The dikes had to be +repaired and the ditches carefully cleared of silt each year, or they +would become useless. + +There also had to be hard and fast rules. The person who lived nearest +the ditch or the reservoir must not be allowed to take all the water +and leave none for his neighbors. It was not only a business of +learning to control the rivers and of making their waters do the +farmer’s work. It also meant controlling men. But once these men had +managed both kinds of controls, what a wonderful yield they had! The +soil was already fertile, and the silt which came in the floods and +ditches kept adding fertile soil. + + +THE GERM OF CIVILIZATION IN EGYPT AND MESOPOTAMIA + +This learning to work together for the common good was the real germ of +the Egyptian and the Mesopotamian civilizations. The bare elements of +civilization were already there: the need for a governing hand and for +laws to see that the communities’ work was done and that the water was +justly shared. You may object that there is a sort of chicken and egg +paradox in this idea. How could the people set up the rules until they +had managed to get a way to live, and how could they manage to get a +way to live until they had set up the rules? I think that small groups +must have moved down along the mud-flats of the river banks quite +early, making use of naturally favorable spots, and that the rules grew +out of such cases. It would have been like the hand-in-hand growth of +automobiles and paved highways in the United States. + +Once the rules and the know-how did get going, there must have been a +constant interplay of the two. Thus, the more the crops yielded, the +richer and better-fed the people would have been, and the more the +population would have grown. As the population grew, more land would +have needed to be flooded or irrigated, and more complex systems of +dikes, reservoirs, canals, and ditches would have been built. The more +complex the system, the more necessity for work on new projects and for +the control of their use.... And so on.... + +What I have just put down for you is a guess at the manner of growth of +some of the formalized systems that go to make up a civilized society. +My explanation has been pointed particularly at Egypt and Mesopotamia. +I have already told you that the irrigation and water-control part of +it does not apply to the development of the Aztecs or the Mayas, or +perhaps anybody else. But I think that a fair part of the story of +Egypt and Mesopotamia must be as I’ve just told you. + +I am particularly anxious that you do _not_ understand me to mean that +irrigation _caused_ civilization. I am sure it was not that simple at +all. For, in fact, a complex and highly engineered irrigation system +proper did not come until later times. Let’s say rather that the simple +beginnings of irrigation allowed and in fact encouraged a great number +of things in the technological, political, social, and moral realms of +culture. We do not yet understand what all these things were or how +they worked. But without these other aspects of culture, I do not +think that urbanization and civilization itself could have come into +being. + + +THE ARCHEOLOGICAL SEQUENCE TO CIVILIZATION IN IRAQ + +We last spoke of the archeological materials of Iraq on page 130, +where I described the village-farming community of Hassunan type. The +Hassunan type villages appear in the hilly-flanks zone and in the +rolling land adjacent to the Tigris in northern Iraq. It is probable +that even before the Hassuna pattern of culture lived its course, a +new assemblage had been established in northern Iraq and Syria. This +assemblage is called Halaf, after a site high on a tributary of the +Euphrates, on the Syro-Turkish border. + +[Illustration: SKETCH OF SELECTED ITEMS OF HALAFIAN ASSEMBLAGE + + BEADS AND PENDANTS + POTTERY MOTIFS + POTTERY] + +The Halafian assemblage is incompletely known. The culture it +represents included a remarkably handsome painted pottery. +Archeologists have tended to be so fascinated with this pottery that +they have bothered little with the rest of the Halafian assemblage. We +do know that strange stone-founded houses, with plans like those of the +popular notion of an Eskimo igloo, were built. Like the pottery of the +Samarran style, which appears as part of the Hassunan assemblage (see +p. 131), the Halafian painted pottery implies great concentration and +excellence of draftsmanship on the part of the people who painted it. + +We must mention two very interesting sites adjacent to the mud-flats of +the rivers, half way down from northern Iraq to the classic alluvial +Mesopotamian area. One is Baghouz on the Euphrates; the other is +Samarra on the Tigris (see map, p. 125). Both these sites yield the +handsome painted pottery of the style called Samarran: in fact it +is Samarra which gives its name to the pottery. Neither Baghouz nor +Samarra have completely Hassunan types of assemblages, and at Samarra +there are a few pots of proper Halafian style. I suppose that Samarra +and Baghouz give us glimpses of those early farmers who had begun to +finger their way down the mud-flats of the river banks toward the +fertile but yet untilled southland. + + +CLASSIC SOUTHERN MESOPOTAMIA FIRST OCCUPIED + +Our next step is into the southland proper. Here, deep in the core of +the mound which later became the holy Sumerian city of Eridu, Iraqi +archeologists uncovered a handsome painted pottery. Pottery of the same +type had been noticed earlier by German archeologists on the surface +of a small mound, awash in the spring floods, near the remains of the +Biblical city of Erich (Sumerian = Uruk; Arabic = Warka). This “Eridu” +pottery, which is about all we have of the assemblage of the people who +once produced it, may be seen as a blend of the Samarran and Halafian +painted pottery styles. This may over-simplify the case, but as yet we +do not have much evidence to go on. The idea does at least fit with my +interpretation of the meaning of Baghouz and Samarra as way-points on +the mud-flats of the rivers half way down from the north. + +My colleague, Robert Adams, believes that there were certainly +riverine-adapted food-collectors living in lower Mesopotamia. The +presence of such would explain why the Eridu assemblage is not simply +the sum of the Halafian and Samarran assemblages. But the domesticated +plants and animals and the basic ways of food-production must have +come from the hilly-flanks country in the north. + +Above the basal Eridu levels, and at a number of other sites in the +south, comes a full-fledged assemblage called Ubaid. Incidentally, +there is an aspect of the Ubaidian assemblage in the north as well. It +seems to move into place before the Halaf manifestation is finished, +and to blend with it. The Ubaidian assemblage in the south is by far +the more spectacular. The development of the temple has been traced +at Eridu from a simple little structure to a monumental building some +62 feet long, with a pilaster-decorated façade and an altar in its +central chamber. There is painted Ubaidian pottery, but the style is +hurried and somewhat careless and gives the _impression_ of having been +a cheap mass-production means of decoration when compared with the +carefully drafted styles of Samarra and Halaf. The Ubaidian people made +other items of baked clay: sickles and axes of very hard-baked clay +are found. The northern Ubaidian sites have yielded tools of copper, +but metal tools of unquestionable Ubaidian find-spots are not yet +available from the south. Clay figurines of human beings with monstrous +turtle-like faces are another item in the southern Ubaidian assemblage. + +[Illustration: SKETCH OF SELECTED ITEMS OF UBAIDIAN ASSEMBLAGE] + +There is a large Ubaid cemetery at Eridu, much of it still awaiting +excavation. The few skeletons so far tentatively studied reveal a +completely modern type of “Mediterraneanoid”; the individuals whom the +skeletons represent would undoubtedly blend perfectly into the modern +population of southern Iraq. What the Ubaidian assemblage says to us is +that these people had already adapted themselves and their culture to +the peculiar riverine environment of classic southern Mesopotamia. For +example, hard-baked clay axes will chop bundles of reeds very well, or +help a mason dress his unbaked mud bricks, and there were only a few +soft and pithy species of trees available. The Ubaidian levels of Eridu +yield quantities of date pits; that excellent and characteristically +Iraqi fruit was already in use. The excavators also found the clay +model of a ship, with the stepping-point for a mast, so that Sinbad the +Sailor must have had his antecedents as early as the time of Ubaid. +The bones of fish, which must have flourished in the larger canals as +well as in the rivers, are common in the Ubaidian levels and thereafter. + + +THE UBAIDIAN ACHIEVEMENT + +On present evidence, my tendency is to see the Ubaidian assemblage +in southern Iraq as the trace of a new era. I wish there were more +evidence, but what we have suggests this to me. The culture of southern +Ubaid soon became a culture of towns--of centrally located towns with +some rural villages about them. The town had a temple and there must +have been priests. These priests probably had political and economic +functions as well as religious ones, if the somewhat later history of +Mesopotamia may suggest a pattern for us. Presently the temple and its +priesthood were possibly the focus of the market; the temple received +its due, and may already have had its own lands and herds and flocks. +The people of the town, undoubtedly at least in consultation with the +temple administration, planned and maintained the simple irrigation +ditches. As the system flourished, the community of rural farmers would +have produced more than sufficient food. The tendency for specialized +crafts to develop--tentative at best at the cultural level of the +earlier village-farming community era--would now have been achieved, +and probably many other specialists in temple administration, water +control, architecture, and trade would also have appeared, as the +surplus food-supply was assured. + +Southern Mesopotamia is not a land rich in natural resources other +than its fertile soil. Stone, good wood for construction, metal, and +innumerable other things would have had to be imported. Grain and +dates--although both are bulky and difficult to transport--and wool and +woven stuffs must have been the mediums of exchange. Over what area did +the trading net-work of Ubaid extend? We start with the idea that the +Ubaidian assemblage is most richly developed in the south. We assume, I +think, correctly, that it represents a cultural flowering of the south. +On the basis of the pottery of the still elusive “Eridu” immigrants +who had first followed the rivers into alluvial Mesopotamia, we get +the notion that the characteristic painted pottery style of Ubaid +was developed in the southland. If this reconstruction is correct +then we may watch with interest where the Ubaid pottery-painting +tradition spread. We have already mentioned that there is a substantial +assemblage of (and from the southern point of view, _fairly_ pure) +Ubaidian material in northern Iraq. The pottery appears all along the +Iranian flanks, even well east of the head of the Persian Gulf, and +ends in a later and spectacular flourish in an extremely handsome +painted style called the “Susa” style. Ubaidian pottery has been noted +up the valleys of both of the great rivers, well north of the Iraqi +and Syrian borders on the southern flanks of the Anatolian plateau. +It reaches the Mediterranean Sea and the valley of the Orontes in +Syria, and it may be faintly reflected in the painted style of a +site called Ghassul, on the east bank of the Jordan in the Dead Sea +Valley. Over this vast area--certainly in all of the great basin of +the Tigris-Euphrates drainage system and its natural extensions--I +believe we may lay our fingers on the traces of a peculiar way of +decorating pottery, which we call Ubaidian. This cursive and even +slap-dash decoration, it appears to me, was part of a new cultural +tradition which arose from the adjustments which immigrant northern +farmers first made to the new and challenging environment of southern +Mesopotamia. But exciting as the idea of the spread of influences of +the Ubaid tradition in space may be, I believe you will agree that the +consequences of the growth of that tradition in southern Mesopotamia +itself, as time passed, are even more important. + + +THE WARKA PHASE IN THE SOUTH + +So far, there are only two radiocarbon determinations for the Ubaidian +assemblage, one from Tepe Gawra in the north and one from Warka in the +south. My hunch would be to use the dates 4500 to 3750 B.C., with a +plus or more probably a minus factor of about two hundred years for +each, as the time duration of the Ubaidian assemblage in southern +Mesopotamia. + +Next, much to our annoyance, we have what is almost a temporary +black-out. According to the system of terminology I favor, our next +“assemblage” after that of Ubaid is called the _Warka_ phase, from +the Arabic name for the site of Uruk or Erich. We know it only from +six or seven levels in a narrow test-pit at Warka, and from an even +smaller hole at another site. This “assemblage,” so far, is known only +by its pottery, some of which still bears Ubaidian style painting. The +characteristic Warkan pottery is unpainted, with smoothed red or gray +surfaces and peculiar shapes. Unquestionably, there must be a great +deal more to say about the Warkan assemblage, but someone will first +have to excavate it! + + +THE DAWN OF CIVILIZATION + +After our exasperation with the almost unknown Warka interlude, +following the brilliant “false dawn” of Ubaid, we move next to an +assemblage which yields traces of a preponderance of those elements +which we noted (p. 144) as meaning civilization. This assemblage +is that called _Proto-Literate_; it already contains writing. On +the somewhat shaky principle that writing, however early, means +history--and no longer prehistory--the assemblage is named for the +historical implications of its content, and no longer after the name of +the site where it was first found. Since some of the older books used +site-names for this assemblage, I will tell you that the Proto-Literate +includes the latter half of what used to be called the “Uruk period” +_plus_ all of what used to be called the “Jemdet Nasr period.” It shows +a consistent development from beginning to end. + +I shall, in fact, leave much of the description and the historic +implications of the Proto-Literate assemblage to the conventional +historians. Professor T. J. Jacobsen, reaching backward from the +legends he finds in the cuneiform writings of slightly later times, can +in fact tell you a more complete story of Proto-Literate culture than +I can. It should be enough here if I sum up briefly what the excavated +archeological evidence shows. + +We have yet to dig a Proto-Literate site in its entirety, but the +indications are that the sites cover areas the size of small cities. +In architecture, we know of large and monumental temple structures, +which were built on elaborate high terraces. The plans and decoration +of these temples follow the pattern set in the Ubaid phase: the chief +difference is one of size. The German excavators at the site of Warka +reckoned that the construction of only one of the Proto-Literate temple +complexes there must have taken 1,500 men, each working a ten-hour day, +five years to build. + + +ART AND WRITING + +If the architecture, even in its monumental forms, can be seen to +stem from Ubaidian developments, this is not so with our other +evidence of Proto-Literate artistic expression. In relief and applied +sculpture, in sculpture in the round, and on the engraved cylinder +seals--all of which now make their appearance--several completely +new artistic principles are apparent. These include the composition +of subject-matter in groups, commemorative scenes, and especially +the ability and apparent desire to render the human form and face. +Excellent as the animals of the Franco-Cantabrian art may have been +(see p. 85), and however handsome were the carefully drafted +geometric designs and conventionalized figures on the pottery of the +early farmers, there seems to have been, up to this time, a mental +block about the drawing of the human figure and especially the human +face. We do not yet know what caused this self-consciousness about +picturing themselves which seems characteristic of men before the +appearance of civilization. We do know that with civilization, the +mental block seems to have been removed. + +Clay tablets bearing pictographic signs are the Proto-Literate +forerunners of cuneiform writing. The earliest examples are not well +understood but they seem to be “devices for making accounts and +for remembering accounts.” Different from the later case in Egypt, +where writing appears fully formed in the earliest examples, the +development from simple pictographic signs to proper cuneiform writing +may be traced, step by step, in Mesopotamia. It is most probable +that the development of writing was connected with the temple and +the need for keeping account of the temple’s possessions. Professor +Jacobsen sees writing as a means for overcoming space, time, and the +increasing complications of human affairs: “Literacy, which began +with ... civilization, enhanced mightily those very tendencies in its +development which characterize it as a civilization and mark it off as +such from other types of culture.” + +[Illustration: RELIEF ON A PROTO-LITERATE STONE VASE, WARKA + +Unrolled drawing, with restoration suggested by figures from +contemporary cylinder seals] + +While the new principles in art and the idea of writing are not +foreshadowed in the Ubaid phase, or in what little we know of the +Warkan, I do not think we need to look outside southern Mesopotamia +for their beginnings. We do know something of the adjacent areas, +too, and these beginnings are not there. I think we must accept them +as completely new discoveries, made by the people who were developing +the whole new culture pattern of classic southern Mesopotamia. Full +description of the art, architecture, and writing of the Proto-Literate +phase would call for many details. Men like Professor Jacobsen and Dr. +Adams can give you these details much better than I can. Nor shall I do +more than tell you that the common pottery of the Proto-Literate phase +was so well standardized that it looks factory made. There was also +some handsome painted pottery, and there were stone bowls with inlaid +decoration. Well-made tools in metal had by now become fairly common, +and the metallurgist was experimenting with the casting process. Signs +for plows have been identified in the early pictographs, and a wheeled +chariot is shown on a cylinder seal engraving. But if I were forced to +a guess in the matter, I would say that the development of plows and +draft-animals probably began in the Ubaid period and was another of the +great innovations of that time. + +The Proto-Literate assemblage clearly suggests a highly developed and +sophisticated culture. While perhaps not yet fully urban, it is on +the threshold of urbanization. There seems to have been a very dense +settlement of Proto-Literate sites in classic southern Mesopotamia, +many of them newly founded on virgin soil where no earlier settlements +had been. When we think for a moment of what all this implies, of the +growth of an irrigation system which must have existed to allow the +flourish of this culture, and of the social and political organization +necessary to maintain the irrigation system, I think we will agree that +at last we are dealing with civilization proper. + + +FROM PREHISTORY TO HISTORY + +Now it is time for the conventional ancient historians to take over +the story from me. Remember this when you read what they write. Their +real base-line is with cultures ruled over by later kings and emperors, +whose writings describe military campaigns and the administration of +laws and fully organized trading ventures. To these historians, the +Proto-Literate phase is still a simple beginning for what is to follow. +If they mention the Ubaid assemblage at all--the one I was so lyrical +about--it will be as some dim and fumbling step on the path to the +civilized way of life. + +I suppose you could say that the difference in the approach is that as +a prehistorian I have been looking forward or upward in time, while the +historians look backward to glimpse what I’ve been describing here. My +base-line was half a million years ago with a being who had little more +than the capacity to make tools and fire to distinguish him from the +animals about him. Thus my point of view and that of the conventional +historian are bound to be different. You will need both if you want to +understand all of the story of men, as they lived through time to the +present. + + + + +End of PREHISTORY + +[Illustration] + + +You’ll doubtless easily recall your general course in ancient history: +how the Sumerian dynasties of Mesopotamia were supplanted by those of +Babylonia, how the Hittite kingdom appeared in Anatolian Turkey, and +about the three great phases of Egyptian history. The literate kingdom +of Crete arose, and by 1500 B.C. there were splendid fortified Mycenean +towns on the mainland of Greece. This was the time--about the whole +eastern end of the Mediterranean--of what Professor Breasted called the +“first great internationalism,” with flourishing trade, international +treaties, and royal marriages between Egyptians, Babylonians, and +Hittites. By 1200 B.C., the whole thing had fragmented: “the peoples of +the sea were restless in their isles,” and the great ancient centers in +Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia were eclipsed. Numerous smaller states +arose--Assyria, Phoenicia, Israel--and the Trojan war was fought. +Finally Assyria became the paramount power of all the Near East, +presently to be replaced by Persia. + +A new culture, partaking of older west Asiatic and Egyptian elements, +but casting them with its own tradition into a new mould, arose in +mainland Greece. + +I once shocked my Classical colleagues to the core by referring to +Greece as “a second degree derived civilization,” but there is much +truth in this. The principles of bronze- and then of iron-working, of +the alphabet, and of many other elements in Greek culture were borrowed +from western Asia. Our debt to the Greeks is too well known for me even +to mention it, beyond recalling to you that it is to Greece we owe the +beginnings of rational or empirical science and thought in general. But +Greece fell in its turn to Rome, and in 55 B.C. Caesar invaded Britain. + +I last spoke of Britain on page 142; I had chosen it as my single +example for telling you something of how the earliest farming +communities were established in Europe. Now I will continue with +Britain’s later prehistory, so you may sense something of the end of +prehistory itself. Remember that Britain is simply a single example +we select; the same thing could be done for all the other countries +of Europe, and will be possible also, some day, for further Asia and +Africa. Remember, too, that prehistory in most of Europe runs on for +three thousand or more years _after_ conventional ancient history +begins in the Near East. Britain is a good example to use in showing +how prehistory ended in Europe. As we said earlier, it lies at the +opposite end of Europe from the area of highest cultural achievement in +those times, and should you care to read more of the story in detail, +you may do so in the English language. + + +METAL USERS REACH ENGLAND + +We left the story of Britain with the peoples who made three different +assemblages--the Windmill Hill, the megalith-builders, and the +Peterborough--making adjustments to their environments, to the original +inhabitants of the island, and to each other. They had first arrived +about 2500 B.C., and were simple pastoralists and hoe cultivators who +lived in little village communities. Some of them planted little if any +grain. By 2000 B.C., they were well settled in. Then, somewhere in the +range from about 1900 to 1800 B.C., the traces of the invasion of a new +series of peoples began to appear. + +The first newcomers are called the Beaker folk, after the name of a +peculiar form of pottery they made. The beaker type of pottery seems +oldest in Spain, where it occurs with great collective tombs of +megalithic construction and with copper tools. But the Beaker folk who +reached England seem already to have moved first from Spain(?) to the +Rhineland and Holland. While in the Rhineland, and before leaving for +England, the Beaker folk seem to have mixed with the local population +and also with incomers from northeastern Europe whose culture included +elements brought originally from the Near East by the eastern way +through the steppes. This last group has also been named for a peculiar +article in its assemblage; the group is called the Battle-axe folk. A +few Battle-axe folk elements, including, in fact, stone battle-axes, +reached England with the earliest Beaker folk,[6] coming from the +Rhineland. + + [6] The British authors use the term “Beaker folk” to mean both + archeological assemblage and human physical type. They speak + of a “... tall, heavy-boned, rugged, and round-headed” strain + which they take to have developed, apparently in the Rhineland, + by a mixture of the original (Spanish?) beaker-makers and + the northeast European battle-axe makers. However, since the + science of physical anthropology is very much in flux at the + moment, and since I am not able to assess the evidence for these + physical types, I _do not_ use the term “folk” in this book with + its usual meaning of standardized physical type. When I use + “folk” here, I mean simply _the makers of a given archeological + assemblage_. The difficulty only comes when assemblages are + named for some item in them; it is too clumsy to make an + adjective of the item and refer to a “beakerian” assemblage. + +The Beaker folk settled earliest in the agriculturally fertile south +and east. There seem to have been several phases of Beaker folk +invasions, and it is not clear whether these all came strictly from the +Rhineland or Holland. We do know that their copper daggers and awls +and armlets are more of Irish or Atlantic European than of Rhineland +origin. A few simple habitation sites and many burials of the Beaker +folk are known. They buried their dead singly, sometimes in conspicuous +individual barrows with the dead warrior in his full trappings. The +spectacular element in the assemblage of the Beaker folk is a group +of large circular monuments with ditches and with uprights of wood or +stone. These “henges” became truly monumental several hundred years +later; while they were occasionally dedicated with a burial, they were +not primarily tombs. The effect of the invasion of the Beaker folk +seems to cut across the whole fabric of life in Britain. + +[Illustration: BEAKER] + +There was, however, a second major element in British life at this +time. It shows itself in the less well understood traces of a group +again called after one of the items in their catalogue, the Food-vessel +folk. There are many burials in these “food-vessel” pots in northern +England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the pottery itself seems to +link back to that of the Peterborough assemblage. Like the earlier +Peterborough people in the highland zone before them, the makers of +the food-vessels seem to have been heavily involved in trade. It is +quite proper to wonder whether the food-vessel pottery itself was made +by local women who were married to traders who were middlemen in the +transmission of Irish metal objects to north Germany and Scandinavia. +The belt of high, relatively woodless country, from southwest to +northeast, was already established as a natural route for inland trade. + + +MORE INVASIONS + +About 1500 B.C., the situation became further complicated by the +arrival of new people in the region of southern England anciently +called Wessex. The traces suggest the Brittany coast of France as a +source, and the people seem at first to have been a small but “heroic” +group of aristocrats. Their “heroes” are buried with wealth and +ceremony, surrounded by their axes and daggers of bronze, their gold +ornaments, and amber and jet beads. These rich finds show that the +trade-linkage these warriors patronized spread from the Baltic sources +of amber to Mycenean Greece or even Egypt, as evidenced by glazed blue +beads. + +The great visual trace of Wessex achievement is the final form of +the spectacular sanctuary at Stonehenge. A wooden henge or circular +monument was first made several hundred years earlier, but the site +now received its great circles of stone uprights and lintels. The +diameter of the surrounding ditch at Stonehenge is about 350 feet, the +diameter of the inner circle of large stones is about 100 feet, and +the tallest stone of the innermost horseshoe-shaped enclosure is 29 +feet 8 inches high. One circle is made of blue stones which must have +been transported from Pembrokeshire, 145 miles away as the crow flies. +Recently, many carvings representing the profile of a standard type of +bronze axe of the time, and several profiles of bronze daggers--one of +which has been called Mycenean in type--have been found carved in the +stones. We cannot, of course, describe the details of the religious +ceremonies which must have been staged in Stonehenge, but we can +certainly imagine the well-integrated and smoothly working culture +which must have been necessary before such a great monument could have +been built. + + +“THIS ENGLAND” + +The range from 1900 to about 1400 B.C. includes the time of development +of the archeological features usually called the “Early Bronze Age” +in Britain. In fact, traces of the Wessex warriors persisted down to +about 1200 B.C. The main regions of the island were populated, and the +adjustments to the highland and lowland zones were distinct and well +marked. The different aspects of the assemblages of the Beaker folk and +the clearly expressed activities of the Food-vessel folk and the Wessex +warriors show that Britain was already taking on her characteristic +trading role, separated from the European continent but conveniently +adjacent to it. The tin of Cornwall--so important in the production +of good bronze--as well as the copper of the west and of Ireland, +taken with the gold of Ireland and the general excellence of Irish +metal work, assured Britain a trader’s place in the then known world. +Contacts with the eastern Mediterranean may have been by sea, with +Cornish tin as the attraction, or may have been made by the Food-vessel +middlemen on their trips to the Baltic coast. There they would have +encountered traders who traveled the great north-south European road, +by which Baltic amber moved southward to Greece and the Levant, and +ideas and things moved northward again. + +There was, however, the Channel between England and Europe, and this +relative isolation gave some peace and also gave time for a leveling +and further fusion of culture. The separate cultural traditions began +to have more in common. The growing of barley, the herding of sheep and +cattle, and the production of woolen garments were already features +common to all Britain’s inhabitants save a few in the remote highlands, +the far north, and the distant islands not yet fully touched by +food-production. The “personality of Britain” was being formed. + + +CREMATION BURIALS BEGIN + +Along with people of certain religious faiths, archeologists are +against cremation (for other people!). Individuals to be cremated seem +in past times to have been dressed in their trappings and put upon a +large pyre: it takes a lot of wood and a very hot fire for a thorough +cremation. When the burning had been completed, the few fragile scraps +of bone and such odd beads of stone or other rare items as had resisted +the great heat seem to have been whisked into a pot and the pot buried. +The archeologist is left with the pot and the unsatisfactory scraps in +it. + +Tentatively, after about 1400 B.C. and almost completely over the whole +island by 1200 B.C., Britain became the scene of cremation burials +in urns. We know very little of the people themselves. None of their +settlements have been identified, although there is evidence that they +grew barley and made enclosures for cattle. The urns used for the +burials seem to have antecedents in the pottery of the Food-vessel +folk, and there are some other links with earlier British traditions. +In Lancashire, a wooden circle seems to have been built about a grave +with cremated burials in urns. Even occasional instances of cremation +may be noticed earlier in Britain, and it is not clear what, if any, +connection the British cremation burials in urns have with the classic +_Urnfields_ which were now beginning in the east Mediterranean and +which we shall mention below. + +The British cremation-burial-in-urns folk survived a long time in the +highland zone. In the general British scheme, they make up what is +called the “Middle Bronze Age,” but in the highland zone they last +until after 900 B.C. and are considered to be a specialized highland +“Late Bronze Age.” In the highland zone, these later cremation-burial +folk seem to have continued the older Food-vessel tradition of being +middlemen in the metal market. + +Granting that our knowledge of this phase of British prehistory is +very restricted because the cremations have left so little for the +archeologist, it does not appear that the cremation-burial-urn folk can +be sharply set off from their immediate predecessors. But change on a +grander scale was on the way. + + +REVERBERATIONS FROM CENTRAL EUROPE + +In the centuries immediately following 1000 B.C., we see with fair +clarity two phases of a cultural process which must have been going +on for some time. Certainly several of the invasions we have already +described in this chapter were due to earlier phases of the same +cultural process, but we could not see the details. + +[Illustration: SLASHING SWORD] + +Around 1200 B.C. central Europe was upset by the spread of the +so-called Urnfield folk, who practiced cremation burial in urns and +whom we also know to have been possessors of long, slashing swords and +the horse. I told you above that we have no idea that the Urnfield +folk proper were in any way connected with the people who made +cremation-burial-urn cemeteries a century or so earlier in Britain. It +has been supposed that the Urnfield folk themselves may have shared +ideas with the people who sacked Troy. We know that the Urnfield +pressure from central Europe displaced other people in northern France, +and perhaps in northwestern Germany, and that this reverberated into +Britain about 1000 B.C. + +Soon after 750 B.C., the same thing happened again. This time, the +pressure from central Europe came from the Hallstatt folk who were iron +tool makers: the reverberation brought people from the western Alpine +region across the Channel into Britain. + +At first it is possible to see the separate results of these folk +movements, but the developing cultures soon fused with each other and +with earlier British elements. Presently there were also strains of +other northern and western European pottery and traces of Urnfield +practices themselves which appeared in the finished British product. I +hope you will sense that I am vastly over-simplifying the details. + +The result seems to have been--among other things--a new kind of +agricultural system. The land was marked off by ditched divisions. +Rectangular fields imply the plow rather than hoe cultivation. We seem +to get a picture of estate or tribal boundaries which included village +communities; we find a variety of tools in bronze, and even whetstones +which show that iron has been honed on them (although the scarce iron +has not been found). Let me give you the picture in Professor S. +Piggott’s words: “The ... Late Bronze Age of southern England was but +the forerunner of the earliest Iron Age in the same region, not only in +the techniques of agriculture, but almost certainly in terms of ethnic +kinship ... we can with some assurance talk of the Celts ... the great +early Celtic expansion of the Continent is recognized to be that of the +Urnfield people.” + +Thus, certainly by 500 B.C., there were people in Britain, some of +whose descendants we may recognize today in name or language in remote +parts of Wales, Scotland, and the Hebrides. + + +THE COMING OF IRON + +Iron--once the know-how of reducing it from its ore in a very hot, +closed fire has been achieved--produces a far cheaper and much more +efficient set of tools than does bronze. Iron tools seem first to +have been made in quantity in Hittite Anatolia about 1500 B.C. In +continental Europe, the earliest, so-called Hallstatt, iron-using +cultures appeared in Germany soon after 750 B.C. Somewhat later, +Greek and especially Etruscan exports of _objets d’art_--which moved +with a flourishing trans-Alpine wine trade--influenced the Hallstatt +iron-working tradition. Still later new classical motifs, together with +older Hallstatt, oriental, and northern nomad motifs, gave rise to a +new style in metal decoration which characterizes the so-called La Tène +phase. + +A few iron users reached Britain a little before 400 B.C. Not long +after that, a number of allied groups appeared in southern and +southeastern England. They came over the Channel from France and must +have been Celts with dialects related to those already in England. A +second wave of Celts arrived from the Marne district in France about +250 B.C. Finally, in the second quarter of the first century B.C., +there were several groups of newcomers, some of whom were Belgae of +a mixed Teutonic-Celtic confederacy of tribes in northern France and +Belgium. The Belgae preceded the Romans by only a few years. + + +HILL-FORTS AND FARMS + +The earliest iron-users seem to have entrenched themselves temporarily +within hill-top forts, mainly in the south. Gradually, they moved +inland, establishing _individual_ farm sites with extensive systems +of rectangular fields. We recognize these fields by the “lynchets” or +lines of soil-creep which plowing left on the slopes of hills. New +crops appeared; there were now bread wheat, oats, and rye, as well as +barley. + +At Little Woodbury, near the town of Salisbury, a farmstead has been +rather completely excavated. The rustic buildings were within a +palisade, the round house itself was built of wood, and there were +various outbuildings and pits for the storage of grain. Weaving was +done on the farm, but not blacksmithing, which must have been a +specialized trade. Save for the lack of firearms, the place might +almost be taken for a farmstead on the American frontier in the early +1800’s. + +Toward 250 B.C. there seems to have been a hasty attempt to repair the +hill-forts and to build new ones, evidently in response to signs of +restlessness being shown by remote relatives in France. + + +THE SECOND PHASE + +Perhaps the hill-forts were not entirely effective or perhaps a +compromise was reached. In any case, the newcomers from the Marne +district did establish themselves, first in the southeast and then to +the north and west. They brought iron with decoration of the La Tène +type and also the two-wheeled chariot. Like the Wessex warriors of +over a thousand years earlier, they made “heroes’” graves, with their +warriors buried in the war-chariots and dressed in full trappings. + +[Illustration: CELTIC BUCKLE] + +The metal work of these Marnian newcomers is excellent. The peculiar +Celtic art style, based originally on the classic tendril motif, +is colorful and virile, and fits with Greek and Roman descriptions +of Celtic love of color in dress. There is a strong trace of these +newcomers northward in Yorkshire, linked by Ptolemy’s description to +the Parisii, doubtless part of the Celtic tribe which originally gave +its name to Paris on the Seine. Near Glastonbury, in Somerset, two +villages in swamps have been excavated. They seem to date toward the +middle of the first century B.C., which was a troubled time in Britain. +The circular houses were built on timber platforms surrounded with +palisades. The preservation of antiquities by the water-logged peat of +the swamp has yielded us a long catalogue of the materials of these +villagers. + +In Scotland, which yields its first iron tools at a date of about 100 +B.C., and in northern Ireland even slightly earlier, the effects of the +two phases of newcomers tend especially to blend. Hill-forts, “brochs” +(stone-built round towers) and a variety of other strange structures +seem to appear as the new ideas develop in the comparative isolation of +northern Britain. + + +THE THIRD PHASE + +For the time of about the middle of the first century B.C., we again +see traces of frantic hill-fort construction. This simple military +architecture now took some new forms. Its multiple ramparts must +reflect the use of slings as missiles, rather than spears. We probably +know the reason. In 56 B.C., Julius Caesar chastised the Veneti of +Brittany for outraging the dignity of Roman ambassadors. The Veneti +were famous slingers, and doubtless the reverberations of escaping +Veneti were felt across the Channel. The military architecture suggests +that some Veneti did escape to Britain. + +Also, through Caesar, we learn the names of newcomers who arrived in +two waves, about 75 B.C. and about 50 B.C. These were the Belgae. Now, +at last, we can even begin to speak of dynasties and individuals. +Some time before 55 B.C., the Catuvellauni, originally from the Marne +district in France, had possessed themselves of a large part of +southeastern England. They evidently sailed up the Thames and built a +town of over a hundred acres in area. Here ruled Cassivellaunus, “the +first man in England whose name we know,” and whose town Caesar sacked. +The town sprang up elsewhere again, however. + + +THE END OF PREHISTORY + +Prehistory, strictly speaking, is now over in southern Britain. +Claudius’ effective invasion took place in 43 A.D.; by 83 A.D., a raid +had been made as far north as Aberdeen in Scotland. But by 127 A.D., +Hadrian had completed his wall from the Solway to the Tyne, and the +Romans settled behind it. In Scotland, Romanization can have affected +the countryside very little. Professor Piggott adds that “... it is +when the pressure of Romanization is relaxed by the break-up of the +Dark Ages that we see again the Celtic metal-smiths handling their +material with the same consummate skill as they had before the Roman +Conquest, and with traditional styles that had not even then forgotten +their Marnian and Belgic heritage.” + +In fact, many centuries go by, in Britain as well as in the rest of +Europe, before the archeologist’s task is complete and the historian on +his own is able to describe the ways of men in the past. + + +BRITAIN AS A SAMPLE OF THE GENERAL COURSE OF PREHISTORY IN EUROPE + +In giving this very brief outline of the later prehistory of Britain, +you will have noticed how often I had to refer to the European +continent itself. Britain, beyond the English Channel for all of her +later prehistory, had a much simpler course of events than did most of +the rest of Europe in later prehistoric times. This holds, in spite +of all the “invasions” and “reverberations” from the continent. Most +of Europe was the scene of an even more complicated ebb and flow of +cultural change, save in some of its more remote mountain valleys and +peninsulas. + +The whole course of later prehistory in Europe is, in fact, so very +complicated that there is no single good book to cover it all; +certainly there is none in English. There are some good regional +accounts and some good general accounts of part of the range from about +3000 B.C. to A.D. 1. I suspect that the difficulty of making a good +book that covers all of its later prehistory is another aspect of what +makes Europe so very complicated a continent today. The prehistoric +foundations for Europe’s very complicated set of civilizations, +cultures, and sub-cultures--which begin to appear as history +proceeds--were in themselves very complicated. + +Hence, I selected the case of Britain as a single example of how +prehistory ends in Europe. It could have been more complicated than we +found it to be. Even in the subject matter on Britain in the chapter +before the last, we did not see direct traces of the effect on Britain +of the very important developments which took place in the Danubian +way from the Near East. Apparently Britain was not affected. Britain +received the impulses which brought copper, bronze, and iron tools from +an original east Mediterranean homeland into Europe, almost at the ends +of their journeys. But by the same token, they had had time en route to +take on their characteristic European aspects. + +Some time ago, Sir Cyril Fox wrote a famous book called _The +Personality of Britain_, sub-titled “Its Influence on Inhabitant and +Invader in Prehistoric and Early Historic Times.” We have not gone +into the post-Roman early historic period here; there are still the +Anglo-Saxons and Normans to account for as well as the effects of +the Romans. But what I have tried to do was to begin the story of +how the personality of Britain was formed. The principles that Fox +used, in trying to balance cultural and environmental factors and +interrelationships would not be greatly different for other lands. + + + + +Summary + +[Illustration] + + +In the pages you have read so far, you have been brought through the +earliest 99 per cent of the story of man’s life on this planet. I have +left only 1 per cent of the story for the historians to tell. + + +THE DRAMA OF THE PAST + +Men first became men when evolution had carried them to a certain +point. This was the point where the eye-hand-brain co-ordination was +good enough so that tools could be made. When tools began to be made +according to sets of lasting habits, we know that men had appeared. +This happened over a half million years ago. The stage for the play +may have been as broad as all of Europe, Africa, and Asia. At least, +it seems unlikely that it was only one little region that saw the +beginning of the drama. + +Glaciers and different climates came and went, to change the settings. +But the play went on in the same first act for a very long time. The +men who were the players had simple roles. They had to feed themselves +and protect themselves as best they could. They did this by hunting, +catching, and finding food wherever they could, and by taking such +protection as caves, fire, and their simple tools would give them. +Before the first act was over, the last of the glaciers was melting +away, and the players had added the New World to their stage. If +we want a special name for the first act, we could call it _The +Food-Gatherers_. + +There were not many climaxes in the first act, so far as we can see. +But I think there may have been a few. Certainly the pace of the +first act accelerated with the swing from simple gathering to more +intensified collecting. The great cave art of France and Spain was +probably an expression of a climax. Even the ideas of burying the dead +and of the “Venus” figurines must also point to levels of human thought +and activity that were over and above pure food-getting. + + +THE SECOND ACT + +The second act began only about ten thousand years ago. A few of the +players started it by themselves near the center of the Old World part +of the stage, in the Near East. It began as a plant and animal act, but +it soon became much more complicated. + +But the players in this one part of the stage--in the Near East--were +not the only ones to start off on the second act by themselves. Other +players, possibly in several places in the Far East, and certainly in +the New World, also started second acts that began as plant and animal +acts, and then became complicated. We can call the whole second act +_The Food-Producers_. + + +THE FIRST GREAT CLIMAX OF THE SECOND ACT + +In the Near East, the first marked climax of the second act happened +in Mesopotamia and Egypt. The play and the players reached that great +climax that we call civilization. This seems to have come less than +five thousand years after the second act began. But it could never have +happened in the first act at all. + +There is another curious thing about the first act. Many of the players +didn’t know it was over and they kept on with their roles long after +the second act had begun. On the edges of the stage there are today +some players who are still going on with the first act. The Eskimos, +and the native Australians, and certain tribes in the Amazon jungle are +some of these players. They seem perfectly happy to keep on with the +first act. + +The second act moved from climax to climax. The civilizations of +Mesopotamia and Egypt were only the earliest of these climaxes. The +players to the west caught the spirit of the thing, and climaxes +followed there. So also did climaxes come in the Far Eastern and New +World portions of the stage. + +The greater part of the second act should really be described to you +by a historian. Although it was a very short act when compared to the +first one, the climaxes complicate it a great deal. I, a prehistorian, +have told you about only the first act, and the very beginning of the +second. + + +THE THIRD ACT + +Also, as a prehistorian I probably should not even mention the third +act--it began so recently. The third act is _The Industrialization_. +It is the one in which we ourselves are players. If the pace of the +second act was so much faster than that of the first, the pace of the +third act is terrific. The danger is that it may wear down the players +completely. + +What sort of climaxes will the third act have, and are we already in +one? You have seen by now that the acts of my play are given in terms +of modes or basic patterns of human economy--ways in which people +get food and protection and safety. The climaxes involve more than +human economy. Economics and technological factors may be part of the +climaxes, but they are not all. The climaxes may be revolutions in +their own way, intellectual and social revolutions if you like. + +If the third act follows the pattern of the second act, a climax should +come soon after the act begins. We may be due for one soon if we are +not already in it. Remember the terrific pace of this third act. + + +WHY BOTHER WITH PREHISTORY? + +Why do we bother about prehistory? The main reason is that we think it +may point to useful ideas for the present. We are in the troublesome +beginnings of the third act of the play. The beginnings of the second +act may have lessons for us and give depth to our thinking. I know +there are at least _some_ lessons, even in the present incomplete +state of our knowledge. The players who began the second act--that of +food-production--separately, in different parts of the world, were not +all of one “pure race” nor did they have “pure” cultural traditions. +Some apparently quite mixed Mediterraneans got off to the first start +on the second act and brought it to its first two climaxes as well. +Peoples of quite different physical type achieved the first climaxes in +China and in the New World. + +In our British example of how the late prehistory of Europe worked, we +listed a continuous series of “invasions” and “reverberations.” After +each of these came fusion. Even though the Channel protected Britain +from some of the extreme complications of the mixture and fusion of +continental Europe, you can see how silly it would be to refer to a +“pure” British race or a “pure” British culture. We speak of the United +States as a “melting pot.” But this is nothing new. Actually, Britain +and all the rest of the world have been “melting pots” at one time or +another. + +By the time the written records of Mesopotamia and Egypt begin to turn +up in number, the climaxes there are well under way. To understand the +beginnings of the climaxes, and the real beginnings of the second act +itself, we are thrown back on prehistoric archeology. And this is as +true for China, India, Middle America, and the Andes, as it is for the +Near East. + +There are lessons to be learned from all of man’s past, not simply +lessons of how to fight battles or win peace conferences, but of how +human society evolves from one stage to another. Many of these lessons +can only be looked for in the prehistoric past. So far, we have only +made a beginning. There is much still to do, and many gaps in the story +are yet to be filled. The prehistorian’s job is to find the evidence, +to fill the gaps, and to discover the lessons men have learned in the +past. As I see it, this is not only an exciting but a very practical +goal for which to strive. + + + + +List of Books + + +BOOKS OF GENERAL INTEREST + +(Chosen from a variety of the increasingly useful list of cheap +paperbound books.) + + Childe, V. Gordon + _What Happened in History._ 1954. Penguin. + _Man Makes Himself._ 1955. Mentor. + _The Prehistory of European Society._ 1958. Penguin. + + Dunn, L. C., and Dobzhansky, Th. + _Heredity, Race, and Society._ 1952. Mentor. + + Frankfort, Henri, Frankfort, H. A., Jacobsen, Thorkild, and Wilson, + John A. + _Before Philosophy._ 1954. Penguin. + + Simpson, George G. + _The Meaning of Evolution._ 1955. Mentor. + + Wheeler, Sir Mortimer + _Archaeology from the Earth._ 1956. Penguin. + + +GEOCHRONOLOGY AND THE ICE AGE + +(Two general books. Some Pleistocene geologists disagree with Zeuner’s +interpretation of the dating evidence, but their points of view appear +in professional journals, in articles too cumbersome to list here.) + + Flint, R. F. + _Glacial Geology and the Pleistocene Epoch._ 1947. John Wiley + and Sons. + + Zeuner, F. E. + _Dating the Past._ 1952 (3rd ed.). Methuen and Co. + + +FOSSIL MEN AND RACE + +(The points of view of physical anthropologists and human +paleontologists are changing very quickly. Two of the different points +of view are listed here.) + + Clark, W. E. Le Gros + _History of the Primates._ 1956 (5th ed.). British Museum + (Natural History). (Also in Phoenix edition, 1957.) + + Howells, W. W. + _Mankind So Far._ 1944. Doubleday, Doran. + + +GENERAL ANTHROPOLOGY + +(These are standard texts not absolutely up to date in every detail, or +interpretative essays concerned with cultural change through time as +well as in space.) + + Kroeber, A. L. + _Anthropology._ 1948. Harcourt, Brace. + + Linton, Ralph + _The Tree of Culture._ 1955. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. + + Redfield, Robert + _The Primitive World and Its Transformations._ 1953. Cornell + University Press. + + Steward, Julian H. + _Theory of Culture Change._ 1955. University of Illinois Press. + + White, Leslie + _The Science of Culture._ 1949. Farrar, Strauss. + + +GENERAL PREHISTORY + +(A sampling of the more useful and current standard works in English.) + + Childe, V. Gordon + _The Dawn of European Civilization._ 1957. Kegan Paul, Trench, + Trubner. + _Prehistoric Migrations in Europe._ 1950. Instituttet for + Sammenlignende Kulturforskning. + + Clark, Grahame + _Archaeology and Society._ 1957. Harvard University Press. + + Clark, J. G. D. + _Prehistoric Europe: The Economic Basis._ 1952. Methuen and Co. + + Garrod, D. A. E. + _Environment, Tools, and Man._ 1946. Cambridge University + Press. + + Movius, Hallam L., Jr. + “Old World Prehistory: Paleolithic” in _Anthropology Today_. + Kroeber, A. L., ed. 1953. University of Chicago Press. + + Oakley, Kenneth P. + _Man the Tool-Maker._ 1956. British Museum (Natural History). + (Also in Phoenix edition, 1957.) + + Piggott, Stuart + _British Prehistory._ 1949. Oxford University Press. + + Pittioni, Richard + _Die Urgeschichtlichen Grundlagen der Europäischen Kultur._ + 1949. Deuticke. (A single book which does attempt to cover the + whole range of European prehistory to ca. 1 A.D.) + + +THE NEAR EAST + + Adams, Robert M. + “Developmental Stages in Ancient Mesopotamia,” _in_ Steward, + Julian, _et al_, _Irrigation Civilizations: A Comparative + Study_. 1955. Pan American Union. + + Braidwood, Robert J. + _The Near East and the Foundations for Civilization._ 1952. + University of Oregon. + + Childe, V. Gordon + _New Light on the Most Ancient East._ 1952. Oriental Dept., + Routledge and Kegan Paul. + + Frankfort, Henri + _The Birth of Civilization in the Near East._ 1951. University + of Indiana Press. (Also in Anchor edition, 1956.) + + Pallis, Svend A. + _The Antiquity of Iraq._ 1956. Munksgaard. + + Wilson, John A. + _The Burden of Egypt._ 1951. University of Chicago Press. (Also + in Phoenix edition, called _The Culture of Ancient Egypt_, + 1956.) + + +HOW DIGGING IS DONE + + Braidwood, Linda + _Digging beyond the Tigris._ 1953. Schuman, New York. + + Wheeler, Sir Mortimer + _Archaeology from the Earth._ 1954. Oxford, London. + + + + +Index + + + Abbevillian, 48; + core-biface tool, 44, 48 + + Acheulean, 48, 60 + + Acheuleo-Levalloisian, 63 + + Acheuleo-Mousterian, 63 + + Adams, R. M., 106 + + Adzes, 45 + + Africa, east, 67, 89; + north, 70, 89; + south, 22, 25, 34, 40, 67 + + Agriculture, incipient, in England, 140; + in Near East, 123 + + Ain Hanech, 48 + + Amber, taken from Baltic to Greece, 167 + + American Indians, 90, 142 + + Anatolia, used as route to Europe, 138 + + Animals, in caves, 54, 64; + in cave art, 85 + + Antevs, Ernst, 19 + + Anyathian, 47 + + Archeological interpretation, 8 + + Archeology, defined, 8 + + Architecture, at Jarmo, 128; + at Jericho, 133 + + Arrow, points, 94; + shaft straightener, 83 + + Art, in caves, 84; + East Spanish, 85; + figurines, 84; + Franco-Cantabrian, 84, 85; + movable (engravings, modeling, scratchings), 83; + painting, 83; + sculpture, 83 + + Asia, western, 67 + + Assemblage, defined, 13, 14; + European, 94; + Jarmo, 129; + Maglemosian, 94; + Natufian, 113 + + Aterian, industry, 67; + point, 89 + + Australopithecinae, 24 + + Australopithecine, 25, 26 + + Awls, 77 + + Axes, 62, 94 + + Ax-heads, 15 + + Azilian, 97 + + Aztecs, 145 + + + Baghouz, 152 + + Bakun, 134 + + Baltic sea, 93 + + Banana, 107 + + Barley, wild, 108 + + Barrow, 141 + + Battle-axe folk, 164; + assemblage, 164 + + Beads, 80; + bone, 114 + + Beaker folk, 164; + assemblage, 164-165 + + Bear, in cave art, 85; + cult, 68 + + Belgium, 94 + + Belt cave, 126 + + Bering Strait, used as route to New World, 98 + + Bison, in cave art, 85 + + Blade, awl, 77; + backed, 75; + blade-core, 71; + end-scraper, 77; + stone, defined, 71; + strangulated (notched), 76; + tanged point, 76; + tools, 71, 75-80, 90; + tool tradition, 70 + + Boar, wild, in cave art, 85 + + Bogs, source of archeological materials, 94 + + Bolas, 54 + + Bordes, François, 62 + + Borer, 77 + + Boskop skull, 34 + + Boyd, William C., 35 + + Bracelets, 118 + + Brain, development of, 24 + + Breadfruit, 107 + + Breasted, James H., 107 + + Brick, at Jericho, 133 + + Britain, 94; + late prehistory, 163-175; + invaders, 173 + + Broch, 172 + + Buffalo, in China, 54; + killed by stampede, 86 + + Burials, 66, 86; + in “henges,” 164; + in urns, 168 + + Burins, 75 + + Burma, 90 + + Byblos, 134 + + + Camel, 54 + + Cannibalism, 55 + + Cattle, wild, 85, 112; + in cave art, 85; + domesticated, 15; + at Skara Brae, 142 + + Caucasoids, 34 + + Cave men, 29 + + Caves, 62; + art in, 84 + + Celts, 170 + + Chariot, 160 + + Chicken, domestication of, 107 + + Chiefs, in food-gathering groups, 68 + + Childe, V. Gordon, 8 + + China, 136 + + Choukoutien, 28, 35 + + Choukoutienian, 47 + + Civilization, beginnings, 144, 149, 157; + meaning of, 144 + + Clactonian, 45, 47 + + Clay, used in modeling, 128; + baked, used for tools, 153 + + Club-heads, 82, 94 + + Colonization, in America, 142; + in Europe, 142 + + Combe Capelle, 30 + + Combe Capelle-Brünn group, 34 + + Commont, Victor, 51 + + Coon, Carlton S., 73 + + Copper, 134 + + Corn, in America, 145 + + Corrals for cattle, 140 + + “Cradle of mankind,” 136 + + Cremation, 167 + + Crete, 162 + + Cro-Magnon, 30, 34 + + Cultivation, incipient, 105, 109, 111 + + Culture, change, 99; + characteristics, defined, 38, 49; + prehistoric, 39 + + + Danube Valley, used as route from Asia, 138 + + Dates, 153 + + Deer, 54, 96 + + Dog, domesticated, 96 + + Domestication, of animals, 100, 105, 107; + of plants, 100 + + “Dragon teeth” fossils in China, 28 + + Drill, 77 + + Dubois, Eugene, 26 + + + Early Dynastic Period, Mesopotamia, 147 + + East Spanish art, 72, 85 + + Egypt, 70, 126 + + Ehringsdorf, 31 + + Elephant, 54 + + Emiliani, Cesare, 18 + + Emiran flake point, 73 + + England, 163-168; + prehistoric, 19, 40; + farmers in, 140 + + Eoanthropus dawsoni, 29 + + Eoliths, 41 + + Erich, 152 + + Eridu, 152 + + Euphrates River, floods in, 148 + + Europe, cave dwellings, 58; + at end of Ice Age, 93; + early farmers, 140; + glaciers in, 40; + huts in, 86; + routes into, 137-140; + spread of food-production to, 136 + + + Far East, 69, 90 + + Farmers, 103 + + Fauresmith industry, 67 + + Fayum, 135; + radiocarbon date, 146 + + “Fertile Crescent,” 107, 146 + + Figurines, “Venus,” 84; + at Jarmo, 128; + at Ubaid, 153 + + Fire, used by Peking man, 54 + + First Dynasty, Egypt, 147 + + Fish-hooks, 80, 94 + + Fishing, 80; + by food-producers, 122 + + Fish-lines, 80 + + Fish spears, 94 + + Flint industry, 127 + + Fontéchevade, 32, 56, 58 + + Food-collecting, 104, 121; + end of, 104 + + Food-gatherers, 53, 176 + + Food-gathering, 99, 104; + in Old World, 104; + stages of, 104 + + Food-producers, 176 + + Food-producing economy, 122; + in America, 145; + in Asia, 105 + + Food-producing revolution, 99, 105; + causes of, 101; + preconditions for, 100 + + Food-production, beginnings of, 99; + carried to Europe, 110 + + Food-vessel folk, 164 + + “Forest folk,” 97, 98, 104, 110 + + Fox, Sir Cyril, 174 + + France, caves in, 56 + + + Galley Hill (fossil type), 29 + + Garrod, D. A., 73 + + Gazelle, 114 + + Germany, 94 + + Ghassul, 156 + + Glaciers, 18, 30; + destruction by, 40 + + Goat, wild, 108; + domesticated, 128 + + Grain, first planted, 20 + + Graves, passage, 141; + gallery, 141 + + Greece, civilization in, 163; + as route to western Europe, 138; + towns in, 162 + + Grimaldi skeletons, 34 + + + Hackberry seeds used as food, 55 + + Halaf, 151; + assemblage, 151 + + Hallstatt, tradition, 169 + + Hand, development of, 24, 25 + + Hand adzes, 46 + + Hand axes, 44 + + Harpoons, antler, 83, 94; + bone, 82, 94 + + Hassuna, 131; + assemblage, 131, 132 + + Heidelberg, fossil type, 28 + + Hill-forts, in England, 171; + in Scotland, 172 + + Hilly flanks of Near East, 107, 108, 125, 131, 146, 147 + + History, beginning of, 7, 17 + + Hoes, 112 + + Holland, 164 + + Homo sapiens, 32 + + Hooton, E. A., 34 + + Horse, 112; + wild, in cave art, 85; + in China, 54 + + Hotu cave, 126 + + Houses, 122; + at Jarmo, 128; + at Halaf, 151 + + Howe, Bruce, 116 + + Howell, F. Clark, 30 + + Hunting, 93 + + + Ice Age, in Asia, 99; + beginning of, 18; + glaciers in, 41; + last glaciation, 93 + + Incas, 145 + + India, 90, 136 + + Industrialization, 178 + + Industry, blade-tool, 88; + defined, 58; + ground stone, 94 + + Internationalism, 162 + + Iran, 107, 147 + + Iraq, 107, 124, 127, 136, 147 + + Iron, introduction of, 170 + + Irrigation, 123, 149, 155 + + Italy, 138 + + + Jacobsen, T. J., 157 + + Jarmo, 109, 126, 128, 130; + assemblage, 129 + + Java, 23, 29 + + Java man, 26, 27, 29 + + Jefferson, Thomas, 11 + + Jericho, 119, 133 + + Judaidah, 134 + + + Kafuan, 48 + + Kanam, 23, 36 + + Karim Shahir, 116-119, 124; + assemblage, 116, 117 + + Keith, Sir Arthur, 33 + + Kelley, Harper, 51 + + Kharga, 126 + + Khartoum, 136 + + Knives, 80 + + Krogman, W. M., 3, 25 + + + Lamps, 85 + + Land bridges in Mediterranean, 19 + + La Tène phase, 170 + + Laurel leaf point, 78, 89 + + Leakey, L. S. B., 40 + + Le Moustier, 57 + + Levalloisian, 47, 61, 62 + + Levalloiso-Mousterian, 47, 63 + + Little Woodbury, 170 + + + Magic, used by hunters, 123 + + Maglemosian, assemblage, 94, 95; + folk, 98 + + Makapan, 40 + + Mammoth, 93; + in cave art, 85 + + “Man-apes,” 26 + + Mango, 107 + + Mankind, age, 17 + + Maringer, J., 45 + + Markets, 155 + + Marston, A. T., 11 + + Mathiassen, T., 97 + + McCown, T. D., 33 + + Meganthropus, 26, 27, 36 + + Men, defined, 25; + modern, 32 + + Merimde, 135 + + Mersin, 133 + + Metal-workers, 160, 163, 167, 172 + + Micoquian, 48, 60 + + Microliths, 87; + at Jarmo, 130; + “lunates,” 87; + trapezoids, 87; + triangles, 87 + + Minerals used as coloring matter, 66 + + Mine-shafts, 140 + + M’lefaat, 126, 127 + + Mongoloids, 29, 90 + + Mortars, 114, 118, 127 + + Mounds, how formed, 12 + + Mount Carmel, 11, 33, 52, 59, 64, 69, 113, 114 + + “Mousterian man,” 64 + + “Mousterian” tools, 61, 62; + of Acheulean tradition, 62 + + Movius, H. L., 47 + + + Natufian, animals in, 114; + assemblage, 113, 114, 115; + burials, 114; + date of, 113 + + Neanderthal man, 29, 30, 31, 56 + + Near East, beginnings of civilization in, 20, 144; + cave sites, 58; + climate in Ice Age, 99; + “Fertile Crescent,” 107, 146; + food-production in, 99; + Natufian assemblage in, 113-115; + stone tools, 114 + + Needles, 80 + + Negroid, 34 + + New World, 90 + + Nile River valley, 102, 134; + floods in, 148 + + Nuclear area, 106, 110; + in Near East, 107 + + + Obsidian, used for blade tools, 71; + at Jarmo, 130 + + Ochre, red, with burials, 86 + + Oldowan, 48 + + Old World, 67, 70, 90; + continental phases in, 18 + + Olorgesailie, 40, 51 + + Ostrich, in China, 54 + + Ovens, 128 + + Oxygen isotopes, 18 + + + Paintings in caves, 83 + + Paleoanthropic man, 50 + + Palestine, burials, 56; + cave sites, 52; + types of man, 69 + + Parpallo, 89 + + Patjitanian, 45, 47 + + Pebble tools, 42 + + Peking cave, 54; + animals in, 54 + + Peking man, 27, 28, 29, 54, 58 + + Pendants, 80; + bone, 114 + + Pestle, 114 + + Peterborough, 141; + assemblage, 141 + + Pictographic signs, 158 + + Pig, wild, 108 + + “Piltdown man,” 29 + + Pins, 80 + + Pithecanthropus, 26, 27, 30, 36 + + Pleistocene, 18, 25 + + Plows developed, 123 + + Points, arrow, 76; + laurel leaf, 78; + shouldered, 78, 79; + split-based bone, 80, 82; + tanged, 76; + willow leaf, 78 + + Potatoes, in America, 145 + + Pottery, 122, 130, 156; + decorated, 142; + painted, 131, 151, 152; + Susa style, 156; + in tombs, 141 + + Prehistory, defined, 7; + range of, 18 + + Pre-neanderthaloids, 30, 31, 37 + + Pre-Solutrean point, 89 + + Pre-Stellenbosch, 48 + + Proto-Literate assemblage, 157-160 + + + Race, 35; + biological, 36; + “pure,” 16 + + Radioactivity, 9, 10 + + Radioactive carbon dates, 18, 92, 120, 130, 135, 156 + + Redfield, Robert, 38, 49 + + Reed, C. A., 128 + + Reindeer, 94 + + Rhinoceros, 93; + in cave art, 85 + + Rhodesian man, 32 + + Riss glaciation, 58 + + Rock-shelters, 58; + art in, 85 + + + Saccopastore, 31 + + Sahara Desert, 34, 102 + + Samarra, 152; + pottery, 131, 152 + + Sangoan industry, 67 + + Sauer, Carl, 136 + + Sbaikian point, 89 + + Schliemann, H., 11, 12 + + Scotland, 171 + + Scraper, flake, 79; + end-scraper on blade, 77, 78; + keel-shaped, 79, 80, 81 + + Sculpture in caves, 83 + + Sebilian III, 126 + + Shaheinab, 135 + + Sheep, wild, 108; + at Skara Brae, 142; + in China, 54 + + Shellfish, 142 + + Ship, Ubaidian, 153 + + Sialk, 126, 134; + assemblage, 134 + + Siberia, 88; + pathway to New World, 98 + + Sickle, 112, 153; + blade, 113, 130 + + Silo, 122 + + Sinanthropus, 27, 30, 35 + + Skara Brae, 142 + + Snails used as food, 128 + + Soan, 47 + + Solecki, R., 116 + + Solo (fossil type), 29, 32 + + Solutrean industry, 77 + + Spear, shaft, 78; + thrower, 82, 83 + + Speech, development of organs of, 25 + + Squash, in America, 145 + + Steinheim fossil skull, 28 + + Stillbay industry, 67 + + Stonehenge, 166 + + Stratification, in caves, 12, 57; + in sites, 12 + + Swanscombe (fossil type), 11, 28 + + Syria, 107 + + + Tabun, 60, 71 + + Tardenoisian, 97 + + Taro, 107 + + Tasa, 135 + + Tayacian, 47, 59 + + Teeth, pierced, in beads and pendants, 114 + + Temples, 123, 155 + + Tepe Gawra, 156 + + Ternafine, 29 + + Teshik Tash, 69 + + Textiles, 122 + + Thong-stropper, 80 + + Tigris River, floods in, 148 + + Toggle, 80 + + Tomatoes, in America, 145 + + Tombs, megalithic, 141 + + Tool-making, 42, 49 + + Tool-preparation traditions, 65 + + Tools, 62; + antler, 80; + blade, 70, 71, 75; + bone, 66; + chopper, 47; + core-biface, 43, 48, 60, 61; + flake, 44, 47, 51, 60, 64; + flint, 80, 127; + ground stone, 68, 127; + handles, 94; + pebble, 42, 43, 48, 53; + use of, 24 + + Touf (mud wall), 128 + + Toynbee, A. J., 101 + + Trade, 130, 155, 162 + + Traders, 167 + + Traditions, 15; + blade tool, 70; + definition of, 51; + interpretation of, 49; + tool-making, 42, 48; + chopper-tool, 47; + chopper-chopping tool, 45; + core-biface, 43, 48; + flake, 44, 47; + pebble tool, 42, 48 + + Tool-making, prehistory of, 42 + + Turkey, 107, 108 + + + Ubaid, 153; + assemblage, 153-155 + + Urnfields, 168, 169 + + + Village-farming community era, 105, 119 + + + Wad B, 72 + + Wadjak, 34 + + Warka phase, 156; + assemblage, 156 + + Washburn, Sherwood L., 36 + + Water buffalo, domestication of, 107 + + Weidenreich, F., 29, 34 + + Wessex, 166, 167 + + Wheat, wild, 108; + partially domesticated, 127 + + Willow leaf point, 78 + + Windmill Hill, 138; + assemblage, 138, 140 + + Witch doctors, 68 + + Wool, 112; + in garments, 167 + + Writing, 158; + cuneiform, 158 + + Würm I glaciation, 58 + + + Zebu cattle, domestication of, 107 + + Zeuner, F. 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Quitting...' % inputFile) + sys.exit() + if os.path.exists(outputFile): + print('Overwrite %s? [y/n]' % outputFile) + response = input('> ') + if not response.lower().startswith('y'): + sys.exit() + + startTime = time.time() + if mode.lower().startswith('e'): + content = open(inputFile).read() + translated = transCipher.encryptMessage(key, content) + elif mode.lower().startswith('d'): + content = open(outputFile).read() + translated =transCipher .decryptMessage(key, content) + + outputObj = open(outputFile, 'w') + outputObj.write(translated) + outputObj.close() + + totalTime = round(time.time() - startTime, 2) + print('Done (', totalTime, 'seconds )') + +if __name__ == '__main__': + main()