532 



THE CHANGING GENERATIONS 



Half a million years ago Peking man lived in caves in China. He hunted 

 large animals and cooked their meat over his campfires, split their bones 

 for marrow, and collected hackberry fruits and other wild plant foods. 

 He fashioned crude chopping tools from stone and also used split bones 

 as implements. He was, incidentally, a cannibal; the human bones found 

 in his cave dwelling were charred, split, and scattered, and all the skulls 

 had been opened to get at the brain. 



More than 400,000 years later, we find Homo sapiens leading much the 

 same sort of existence in Europe. Cro-Magnon man, like Peking man, 

 lived in caves, hunted large animals, cooked their meat over his camp- 



Fig. 31.18. Upper Paleolithic blade tools and bone implements. A, plain blade. B, an awl 

 or borer. C, a po,inted burin or graver. D, a square-angled burin. E and F, two views of a 

 keeled round scraper. G, a laurel-leat point. H, a part of a spear thrower made from antler. 

 J, a bone harpoon point. (Redrawn from Braidwood, Prehistoric Men, by permission Chicago 

 Natural History Museum.) 



fires, and collected wild plant foods. He still used stone weapons and 

 Jools but made them in greater variety and with far more skill; he also 

 nsed objects carved from bone and antler by means of flint burins. He 

 dressed in skin clothing sewn with sinew by means of bone needles. He 

 doubtless had a rich lore of legend and fable, and certainly he practiced 

 magic to insure successful hunting. To this end he had created the first 

 great artistic tradition in the form of carved images and especially of 

 animal paintings on cave walls, many of which are still preserved. Withall 

 he was still a savage food collector. 



We can be sure that all Paleolithic peoples lived in small scattered 

 groups, for the food-collecting economy cannot support large populations. 

 The archeological record confirms this deduction. Furthermore, all 



