424 REPOET OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1896. 



imported is not determined j but certain ones, such as flint chipping 

 and geometric decoration, and possibly others, were continued into the 

 Neolithic period. These latter arts, though forming the principal motifs 

 of the later period, did not originate in it, but in the earlier period, and 

 are to be credited to it. 



The advanced culture of the Neolithic period was not indigenous to 

 western Europe. It must have been imported from some country 

 farther east, whence the Neolithic people immigrated when they settled 

 in western Europe. That unknown country may or may not have had 

 earlier relations with Paleolithic culture (for we know that both civili- 

 zations spread over that portion of the globe) and in that country the 

 Paleolithic peoples may have taught the Neolithic. But of this we 

 know nothing except what is obtained from the cultural objects them- 

 selves, found in western Europe. The art of flint chipping, for exam- 

 ple, appears to have been continued from the earlier to the later period 

 without any hiatus, and this could have been done only by teaching, 

 which involves contact and communication between the two ages. This 

 contact in western Europe is denied by most prehistoric anthropolo- 

 gists and the theory of a hiatus between the periods in western Europe 

 is generally accepted, though it has been much weakened. Either the 

 theory of a hiatus must be given up or we must admit contact between 

 the two ages in that unknown Eastern country prior to the migra- 

 tion of the Neolithic peoples to the West. It is easier to believe con- 

 tact between the t^^o peoples at an earlier period than to believe in a 

 second origin of ciilture. While certain portions of the cultures of the 

 two peoples have such similarity as to show contact between them, cer- 

 tain other portions have such dissimilarity as to show that the contact 

 was not complete or the communication not perfect. With all the dis- 

 similarities in their culture, it is difiBcult to believe that the Paleolithic 

 man in western Europe carried away all knowledge of the art of flint 

 chipping or that it was lost (to western Europe) during the hiatus, and 

 that the Neolithic man, on his occupation of that country by migration, 

 reinvented or rediscovered it. The author prefers to believe, as the 

 most reasonable hyjwthesis, that there had been in some way, unknown 

 though it be, such contact and communication between the two peoples, 

 either before or after their migration, as enabled the later people to 

 learn from the earlier some of their difficult arts, such as the chipping 

 of flint, the making of spearheads, harpoons, and scrapers. 



How they came to produce the art of their period is remitted to the 

 same study of i)sychology required to determine why the man in Paleo- 

 lithic times should have invented any of the arts. That, we have seen, 

 was because the art objects pleased him. This desire for pleasure was 

 part of the common heritage of mankind, the realization of man's ideal, 

 whi('h we call his good taste. This good taste is involuntary, explain- 

 able only by ])sycho]ogy and on a par with the question why does the 

 child like sweets, or why does one child like sweets and another like 



