The Book of History (Vol. 1 of 18): A History of All Nations from the Earliest Times to the PresentVarious
History
The Book of History (Vol. 1 of 18): A History of All Nations from the Earliest Times to the Present
Various
World history
This shows man to have been then, as he is to-day, master even of
the gigantic animal forms which so far surpass him in mechanical
strength. It is the mind of man that shows itself superior to the
most powerful brute force, even where we meet him for the first time.
From the finds in the Somme valley it appears that Drift Man already
possessed spear, dagger, and axe, besides the knife, as weapons. There
the blades were of stone. The relatively small blades of the Taubach
stone implements are, it is true, of the same character as the stone
implements of Abbeville and Amiens, but they are chiefly, as we have
said, merely knife-like articles, very suitable as blades for knives,
scrapers, and daggers, and as arrow-heads, but not strong enough as
hunting-weapons for such big game. The hunt must, therefore, have
been more a matter of capture in pits and traps, as practised at the
present day where similar large types of animals are hunted by tribes
armed only with defective weapons. The kitchen refuse also proves
that the settlement by the Ilm pond, near Taubach, was a permanent
one, to which the hunters returned after their expeditions, bringing
their game and trophies so far as they were easily transportable. But
there is no trace of domestic animals. They could not have completely
disappeared, any more than remains of clay vessels, which are still
less destructible than bones, and in this respect may be compared to
stone implements. There was no trace of potsherds either.
[Sidenote: The Best “Find” of the Ice Age]
The finds in the Somme valley and near Taubach are of incalculable
importance as sure, indisputable proofs of Drift Man in Europe; but as
regards the wealth of information to be derived from them respecting
man’s psychical condition in that first period in which we can prove
his existence, they are far and away surpassed by the find at the
source of the Schussen, which Oscar Fraas, the celebrated geologist,
has personally inventoried and described. Fraas has rightly given to
his description of this find of Glacial Man--the most important and
best examined hitherto--the title “Contributions to the History of
Civilisation During the Glacial Period.”
The geognostic stratification of the relic-bed on one of the farthest
advanced moraines of the Upper Swabian plateau proves that it
belongs to the Glacial Period, and that this had already pushed its
glacier-moraines to the farthest limit ever reached. In point of time
the finds are, therefore, to be placed at the end of the Glacial
Period, as it was passing into the Postglacial Period; everything still
points to Far Northern conditions of life. The finds at the source of
the Schussen are thus decidedly more recent, geologically, than those
made at Taubach. They are a typical, or, better, _the_ typical example
of the so-called “Reindeer Period” of the end of the Drift.
[Illustration: IMPLEMENTS OF THE STONE AGE AND THEIR MAKING
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