THE HUMAN SPECIES 



531 



growth in certain populations, which resulted in profound modification 

 of the earlier evolutionary trends in man. 



Pre-Neolithic cultures and evolutionary trends. All cultures can be 

 grouped into a few great levels, each characterized by a certain way of 

 existence, or basic economy. Each level is separated from the succeeding 

 one by some epochal cultural advance that wrought great changes in the 

 life of the people who shared it. There have been only a few such cultural 

 revolutions in the history of mankind, and of these the Neolithic Revolu- 



Fig. 31.17. A late Paleolithic scene in a cave in France. A Cro-Magnon artist is making an 

 outline of his left hand, pressed against the cave wall, by blowing powdered red ocher 

 through a bone tube around it. Many such "hands" have been found; presumably they 

 had some magic significance. Inset: Head of a stag in the Grotte de Lascaux, Montignac- 

 sur-Vezere, Dordogne, France, representative of the simpler Cro-Magnon cave art. (Cour- 

 tesy Chicago Natural History Museum and the Service Commercial, Monuments Historiques, 

 Paris, respectively.) 



tion, caused by the discovery of food production, was perhaps the most 

 significant. It marked the beginning of man's period of dominance and 

 abundance and the turning point in human evolutionary trends. 



Throughout the million years or so of the Paleolithic cultural era, or 

 Old Stone Age, men remained savages. That is only another way of saying 

 that they lived at the lowest economic level, in a food-gathering economy. 

 They existed by hunting and fishing and gathering wild foods. Cultural 

 evolution was almost unbelievably slow — how slow may be appreciated 

 by comparing the earliest known culture with that of the Cro-Magnons. 



