MEN OF THE OLD STONE AGE 



325 



authropic phase of culture — the appearance 

 upon the earth of men capable of formulating 

 ideas and of reasoning, men of imagination, 

 and endowed with an artistic sense and abil- 

 ity not inferior to modern man's powers in 

 these respects. 



The arrival in Europe of these men of 

 modern type ought siu'ely to be regarded as 

 the greatest event in its history. Yet the 

 traditional method of subdividing the human 

 epochs does not give due recognition to this 

 fact. At a time when little was known of 

 early man except his stone implements, John 

 Lul)bock (afterward Lord Avebury) dis- 

 tinguished the two well-marked cultural 

 phases before the coming of metals as those 

 of the Old Stone and the New Stone — • PalaiO- 

 lithic and Neolithic — respectively. But 

 since then we have learned something about 

 the men who made and used these weapons, 

 and have come to appreciate the fact that 

 modern man and the manifestation of the 

 human spirit came into evidence long before 

 the Neolithic epoch. The profound break 

 in human history is not represented by the 

 transition from the Palaeolithic to the Neo- 

 lithic, but by that between the Lower and the 

 LTpper Palseolithic. 



"Lartet was the first to perceive that the 

 culture of the grotto of Aurignac was quite 

 distinct from that of the Lower Palseolithic." 

 Many later writers, and no one more emphati- 

 cally than Professor Osborn, have more 

 strongly emphasized the fact that "in the 

 w'hole racial history of Western Europe there 

 has never occurred so profound a change as 

 that involving the disappearance of the 

 Neanderthal race and the appearance of the 

 Cro-Magnon race" — "Homo sapiens, the 

 same race as ourselves." 



I would go further and give expression to 

 this well-attested fact in our nomenclature; 

 for without that kind of specific emphasis 

 even the most careful writer is apt to get his 

 perspective distorted. If we refer to the 

 epoch of the modern type of man as the Neo- 

 anthropic age, and include in it the Upper 



Pala'olilhic and all tlie subsequent ages of 

 luiuian achievement, the Mousterian period 

 and all of man's record that went before it 

 can then be included in a Paheanthropic age. 

 Such a nomenclature would I think stress the 

 outstanding result of modern research. 



If it be urged that the men of the Upper 

 Pahibolithic differed radically from their Neo- 

 lithic successors in their lack of the knowledge 

 of agriculture, the domestication of animals 

 and the manufacture of pottery, I would 

 remind the reader that many races of modern 

 men, which are included within the species 

 sapiens, are still without these accomplish- 

 ments. 



Moreover these achievements were all the 

 work of the modern type of man himself and 

 cannot be regarded as essential distinctive 

 features. For the historian of America does 

 not refuse to regard as Europeans the Span- 

 iards and the Portuguese immigrants into 

 America during the sixteenth century because 

 they did not introduce the steam engine and 

 the electric dynamo! Nor does the fact 

 that men of the Upper Palaeolithic lived in a 

 different climate and used to hunt many 

 creatures now extinct affect the question. 

 What counts for vastly more than all these 

 facts is the consideration, so aptly put by 

 Professor Osborn, that Homo sapiens made 

 his appearance at the close of the Mousterian 

 period, and "effected a social and industrial 

 change and a race replacement of so profound 

 a nature that it would certainly be legitimate 

 to separate the Upper Palseolithic from the 

 Lower by a break equal to that which sepa- 

 rates the former from the Neolithic." The 

 evidence marshalled by Professor Osborn 

 clearly points to the conclusion (in fact, an- 

 other quotation from his book, already cited, 

 actually expresses it) that the former break 

 is even greater, and that the new spirit of 

 mankind really began to manifest itself in 

 Aurignacian times, and continued with no 

 essential change, beyond the acquisition of 

 new arts and crafts into Neolithic and later 

 times. 



