THE HUMAN BACKGROUND 



443 



during the later Neolithic and survived into the following age. 

 The best known representatives are the Swiss Lake Dwellings. 



Transportation by dugout apparently antedates the invention 

 of the wheel, but Neolithic man employed at least crude wheels 

 made from sections of logs, and the significance of this advance 

 can hardly be overestimated. The wheel is so inextricably woven 

 into the fabric of modern civilization that one is inconceivable 





Fig. 287. — Implements typical of the Neolithic Period. 1, ax-hammer; 

 2, ax; 3, saw; 4, dagger; 5, knife; 6, arrow point. (From American Museum 

 of Natural History.) 



without the other. 'Take away fire and the wheel and the world 

 would suddenly revert to sub-Neolithic level." 



Although burial of the dead extends further into the past, it 

 reaches ceremonial significance with Neolithic man. Numerous 

 so-called megalithic monuments still remain — some of them 

 memorials to the dead, and others of unknown symbolic import. 

 Probably the most celebrated is the Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain 

 in England. And finally, to his other accomplishments, Neolithic 



