The archeological materials for the time from 10,000 to 6000 B.C. seem
simpler than those of the previous five thousand years. The great cave
art of France and Spain had gone; so had the fine carving in bone and
antler. Smaller, speedier animals were moving into the new forests. New
ways of hunting them, or ways of getting other food, had to be found.
Hence, new tools and weapons were necessary. Some of the people who
moved into northern Germany were successful reindeer hunters. Then the
reindeer moved off to the north, and again new sources of food had to
be found.
THE READJUSTMENTS COMPLETED IN EUROPE
After a few thousand years, things began to look better. Or at least
we can say this: By about 6000 B.C. we again get hotter archeological
materials. The best of these come from the north European area:
Britain, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, north Germany, southern Norway and
Sweden. Much of this north European material comes from bogs and swamps
where it had become water-logged and has kept very well. Thus we have
much more complete _assemblages_[4] than for any time earlier.
[4] “Assemblage” is a useful word when there are different kinds of
archeological materials belonging together, from one area and of
one time. An assemblage is made up of a number of “industries”
(that is, all the tools in chipped stone, all the tools in
bone, all the tools in wood, the traces of houses, etc.) and
everything else that manages to survive, such as the art, the
burials, the bones of the animals used as food, and the traces
of plant foods; in fact, everything that has been left to us
and can be used to help reconstruct the lives of the people to
whom it once belonged. Our own present-day “assemblage” would be
the sum total of all the objects in our mail-order catalogues,
department stores and supply houses of every sort, our churches,
our art galleries and other buildings, together with our roads,
canals, dams, irrigation ditches, and any other traces we might
leave of ourselves, from graves to garbage dumps. Not everything
would last, so that an archeologist digging us up--say 2,000
years from now--would find only the most durable items in our
assemblage.
The best known of these assemblages is the _Maglemosian_, named after a
great Danish peat-swamp where much has been found.
[Illustration: SKETCH OF MAGLEMOSIAN ASSEMBLAGE
CHIPPED STONE
HEMP
GROUND STONE
BONE AND ANTLER
WOOD]
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