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
To this material concerning Drift Man, scientifically vouched for,
coming from Drift strata that have certainly never been disturbed,
other countries have hitherto made no equal contributions really
enlarging our view. Yet the numerous places where palæolithic--that
is, only rudely chipped--implements of flint, such as were doubtless
used by Drift Man, have been found must not remain unmentioned here. We
know of them in Northern, Central, and Southern France, in the South of
England, in the loess at Thiede, near Brunswick, and in Lower Austria,
Moravia, Hungary, Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal, North Africa, and
Russia.
[Illustration: IMPLEMENTS OF THE STONE AGE
The upper illustrations show handles of celt or stone-cutting
instruments and method of hafting; the lower picture is that of a
handmill of sandstone.
]
[Illustration: A HUT-CIRCLE OF THE BRONZE AGE
One of the earliest forms of habitation in Britain. From the
British Museum “Guide to the Bronze Age.”
]
It is of special importance to note that similar flint tools have also
been found along with extinct land mammalia in the stratified drift
of the Nerbudda valley, in South India, as the supposition more than
suggests itself that Drift Man came to our continent with the Drift
fauna that immigrated from Asia. The possibility that man also got
from North Asia to North America with the mammoth during the Drift
Period can no longer be dismissed after the results of palæontological
research. It explains at once the close connection between the build of
the American and the great Asiatic (Mongolian) races.
[Illustration: REMAINS OF A STONE AGE MANSION
These remains of a large pile hut discovered in Germany show that
Stone Age Man had made good progress in building. The lower diagram
shows a transverse section.
]
[Illustration: THE EARLIEST EFFORTS AT BOAT-BUILDING
The dug-out canoe, hollowed from a single trunk, was the far-off
parent of the ocean-going ship. The upper picture represents a
prehistoric canoe found in Sussex and the lower example is taken
from a German specimen.
]
Stone implements of palæolithic form have been found in Drift strata
in North America, and the same applies also, as we have seen, to South
America. The best finds there were those made by Ameghino in the
pampas formation of Argentina. Here marrow-bones, split, worked, and
burnt, and jaws of the stag, glyptodon, mastodon, and toxodon have
been repeatedly found along with flint tools of palæolithic stamp;
and Santiago Roth, who took part in these researches, supposes that
fossil man in South America occasionally used the coats of mail of
the gigantic armadillos as dwellings. But the civilisation of South
American man is doubtless identical with that of European fossil
man--tools and weapons of the stone types familiar in Europe, the
working of bones, the use of fire for cooking, and animal food, with
the consequent special fondness for fat and marrow.
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