THE HELIX OF HISTORY 23 



1. The invention of tools and weapons. 



2. The discovery of agriculture. 



3. The invention of writing. 



4. The invention of printing. 



By the first of these inventions man evolved from the 

 animal. Agriculture introduced community life, and from 

 it evolved a structure of society. With ^vriting came the pro- 

 duction of records and the transmission, imperfect at first, 

 of knowledge. With the invention of printing, the spreading 

 of knowledge from the writing of one man to become the 

 common heritage of mankind was so enormously facilitated 

 that printing produced a revolutionary change in the rate of 

 progress. 



Our record of man opens W'ith the fragments of tools and 

 pots, the tools long before the pots. The tools were made 

 from wood, bone, or flint. The wood has vanished, and few 

 of the early bone tools remain, but the flint tools form a gieat 

 record— almost the only record we have for the first 40,000 

 years of the 50,000 during which man has made and used 

 tools. Those first 40,000 years are covered by the paleolithic 

 period; the neolithic period starts at about 10,000 b.c; and 

 the historical period some time after 5000 b.c* This earliest 

 record we know— that of the flint w^eapons and tools made by 

 prehistoric and neolithic man— can be deciphered by the 

 changes and improvements in the tools and by the improve- 

 ment in the technique by which the tools w^ere made. 



Flint is found wherever there are chalk deposits, as there 

 are in many parts of Western Europe. The great nodules 

 of flint are found in cavities in the chalk rock and can easily 

 be obtained by anybody who digs a hole in the ground. 

 There are some places w4iere there are layers of flint that 

 form flint mines, and around these places the ancient men 

 w^orked so many flints that the whole ground is covered with 

 masses of flakes. If a lump of flint is struck with a sharp 



* 



For a modification of this chronology and a discussion of prehistoric 

 chronology, see G. E. Daniel, The Three Ages, London, Cambridge 

 University Press, 1943. 



