The New Stone Age in Northern EuropeTyler, John M. (John Mason)
History
The New Stone Age in Northern Europe
Tyler, John M. (John Mason)
Stone age -- Europe
The first unmistakable relic of man in Europe is a human lower jaw found
in the Mauer sands near Heidelberg, some seventy-nine feet below the
surface of the bluff.[20] It seems to belong to the second or
Mindel-Riss interglacial epoch, and its age is estimated by Osborn at
about 250,000 years. Remains characteristic of the oldest Paleolithic
epochs occur between thirty and forty-five feet below the surface. If we
are to find an archæological name for this epoch, there seems to be no
better one than Eolithic, the dawn of the Stone Age, when European man
had hardly more than begun to chip a stone implement, although we must
recognize the unreadiness of many or most archæologists to find a place
for such rude products.[21]
The third interglacial period (Riss-Wurm) and the fourth period of
advance (Wurm) cover what is known as Lower Paleolithic time, which is
the earlier four-fifths or more of the Old Stone Age or Paleolithic
period, extending approximately from 125,000 B. C., to 25,000 B. C.
During the greater part of this period Europe was occupied by the
Neanderthaloid people. Neanderthal man had a very large head with heavy,
overhanging eyebrows meeting above the nose, and a markedly retreating
forehead. The face was high and the large nasal opening indicates a
broad, flat nose. The lower jaw was heavy and the chin retreating. The
trunk was short, thick, and robust, the shoulders broad; the limbs short
and heavy, the arms and lower legs relatively short, and the hands very
large. Although the much-discussed Piltdown skull may quite probably be
regarded as belonging to the earliest part of this period, the finer
form of cranium seems to testify to a higher race of better mental
development than the Neanderthaloids, huddling in their caves and
shelters. It may easily represent a far more progressive ancestral race,
of which they are somewhat degenerate descendants, though Osborn
dissents from this view.[22]
Their remains are found in caves and rock-shelters all over Europe. Here
we find their hearths; the bones of the animals which they had hunted
for their food; their almond-shaped flint axes, "hand-stones"
(_Coups-de-Poing_), the scrapers for dressing skins and shaving wooden
tools, and a variety of other forms. Here they buried their dead. During
the third warm interglacial epoch they lived in the open, as at the
station of Chelles, which has given its name to the earliest Paleolithic
epoch.[23] Their origin and route of migration is quite uncertain, but
it seems probable that they entered Europe from the southern shore of
the Mediterranean.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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