Progress thereafter was rapid, perhaps too rapid. Notable finds were
soon followed by attempts to freeze knowledge into chronologic
classifications. R. Rigollot, Gabriel de Mortillet, Edouard Lartet,
Milne-Edwards, and Henry Christy found in the river terraces and the
caves of France innumerable and varied evidences of man’s activity in
the Great Ice Age. Mortillet named various cultures from the places
where stone tools were found, and then, in 1869, he set them up in a
chronological series.[5] Modified by later discoveries, the series ran
as follows, beginning with the oldest: Chellean, Acheulean, Mousterian,
Aurignacian, Solutrean, and Magdalenian. (Most prehistorians now use the
word Abbevillian instead of Chellean because later research proved that
the tools found originally at Chelles were Acheulean in type, while
those found at Abbeville were earlier.) In the light of present
knowledge, the list is much too simplified. It is based only on European
finds, yet it is supposed to fit the world picture. For more than fifty
years it has served as a scientific straitjacket, patched with new
material here and there, but still gaping at the seams as the husky
young giant of archaeological science grows in stature.
[Illustration: _Time scale of early man in a limited area of Europe,
as estimated by Robert J. Braidwood._]
Enter the Eolith
One of the early difficulties that Mortillet’s list of cultures
encountered was the discovery of implements that preceded his first
culture, the Chellean—or Abbevillian—in time and type. Cruder axes from
older levels had to be called Pre-Chellean (see illustration, page 71).
In England scrapers and other crude tools cropped up in formations that
go back more than 500,000 years.
Then eoliths—“dawn stones”—appeared. They were irregular-shaped pieces
of flint with chips knocked off here and there. Often the chipping
looked purposeful; the flakes made an edge or a point that could be used
to scrape or drill.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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