CULTURAL PROOF OF MAN'S ANTIQUITY 



THE STORY AS TOLD BY PALEOLITHIC EVIDENCE IN EUROPE 

 By George Grant MacCurdy 



THE antiquity of man is based on two general classes of evidence — 

 human skeletal remains and examples of man's handiwork. Either 

 class alone if properly dated is sufficient to prove man's antiquity. 

 When both kinds of evidence are present and agree, as they do in Europe, 

 man's antiquity is firmly established. 



The record shows that man's cultural development has, like his physical 

 evolution, been a slow process. Pre-history is not measured by dynasties, 

 but rather by synchronizing industrial epochs and fauna with geologic 

 periods and with glacial and interglacial epochs. The stone age is com- 

 monly divided into three great periods: eolithic, palaeolithic and neolithic, 

 each of these being subdivided into various epochs. 



The range of the eolithic in the chronological scale is still a debatable 

 question, and will probably continue so to be for an indefinite time owing 

 to the difficulties in the way of drawing a hard and fast line between that 

 which is natural and that which is intentional. No matter from what 

 geological horizon they come, eoliths are alike in that they represent a com- 

 mon culture level. They are natural flakes, chips or nodules of flint that 

 bear traces of utilization and of having been fitted to the hand; they are 

 often retouched also in order to increase utility or lengthen its period. The 

 artifact nature of the eoliths from the Upper Miocene (or Lower Pliocene) 

 of Cantal, France, is still an open question. 



The lower horizons of the palaeolithic are characterized by the gradual 

 evolution of the amygdaloid or almond-shaped type of stone implement. 

 There are four of these horizons based on stratigraphy as well as on the 

 evolution of the river-drift type of implement. With the Strepyan at the 

 base of the Middle Quaternary appear the rudimentary coup de poing and 

 the poniard. In the Chellean epoch the classical almond-shaped implement 

 becomes well defined, although the scars left by chipping the two faces are 

 still large and somewhat irregular with a portion of the nodular crust gen- 

 erally visible at the base. That which distinguishes the Acheulian from the 

 Chellean is the regularity and fineness of the chipping, which is so skillfully 

 done as practically to eliminate the zigzag nature of the edge formed by the 

 meeting of the two chipped faces. 



At the close of the Acheulian epoch there is evidence that man began to 

 occupy caverns and rock-shelters, so that industrial remains are no longer 

 confined to valley deposits. Each class of finds confirms and supplements 

 the other although there is no direct stratigraphic relation between the 

 superimposed floor deposits of the caves and those of the river valleys. The 

 upper palaeolithic series embraces four epochs: Mousterian, Aurignacian, 

 Solutrean, and Magdalenian, to which may be added the Azilian or epoch 



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