MAN FROM THE FARTHEST PAST 
We have now arrived at the cave-dwelling period in 
human history. No doubt man had in earlier times re- 
sorted to caves occasionally for shelter from the weather 
or protection from enemies, human or animal; but the first 
real cave man was the Neanderthaler, whom we find so 
closely associated with the Mousterian type of culture. 
Unlike his predecessors of the Acheulian and still earlier 
periods, he camped in the open very rarely, and then per- 
haps only during the summer months. But it is a mistake 
to suppose that he ever permanently occupied the depths 
of caverns. He lived, on the contrary, only in the portions 
near their mouths—in their “‘vestibules,” so to speak; for 
it is invariably in or just outside the latter that remains of 
his old camp fires are found. 
Fire, as we have seen, man had known and used for ages, 
and it seems likely that even before the Mousterian epoch 
he had learned to kindle it himself. In fact, without 
this knowledge it is hard to see how the Neanderthalers 
could ever have survived the terrible damp cold which 
we know oppressed and desolated Europe during the last 
great glacial stage. 
The shapes of certain types of implements of the Mous- 
terian epoch suggest that they were used for scraping and 
preparing skins for curing (Fig. 42). It appears certain 
that man employed pelts and furs in some way as protec- 
tive coverings during the bitterly cold weather of the time. 
Probably he did not cut them out or fit them to the body 
in any way, but wore them merely as loose wraps. It is 
not impossible that Mousterian man regularly wore a skin 
around his waist; but if he did we may be sure that it was 
not from motives of what we nowadays call “‘modesty”’; 
for the latter feeling is one that has appeared in the world 
only very late in man’s history, and far from universally at 
that. It arises only from teaching and habit, and not out 
of any deep-seated or fundamental instinct. 
Mousterian man, unlike his forerunners, manufactured 
his stone implements mainly out of flakes struck off from 
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