The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and MankindWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
History
The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
World history
What did these Neanderthal men hunt? Their only possible weapons for
killing such giant creatures as the mammoth or the cave bear, or even
the reindeer, were spears of wood, wooden clubs, and those big pieces of
flint they left behind them, the “Chellean” and “Mousterian”
implements;[30] and probably their usual quarry was smaller game. But
they did certainly eat the flesh of the big beasts when they had a
chance, and perhaps they followed them when sick or when wounded by
combats, or took advantage of them when they were bogged or in trouble
with ice or water. (The Labrador Indians still kill the caribou with
spears at awkward river crossings.) At Dewlish in Dorset, an artificial
trench has been found which is supposed to have been a Palæolithic trap
for elephants.[31] We know that the Neanderthalers partly ate their kill
where it fell; but they brought back the big marrow bones to the cave to
crack and eat at leisure, because few ribs and vertebræ are found in the
caves, but great quantities of cracked and split long bones. They used
skins to wrap about them, and the women probably dressed the skins.
We know also that they were right-handed like modern men, because the
left side of the brain (which serves the right side of the body) is
bigger than the right. But while the back parts of the brain which deal
with sight and touch and the energy of the body are well developed, the
front parts, which are connected with thought and speech, are
comparatively small. It was as big a brain as ours, but different. This
species of _Homo_ had certainly a very different mentality from ours;
its individuals were not merely simpler and lower than we are, they were
on another line. It may be they did not speak at all, or very sparingly.
They had nothing that we should call a language.
§ 2
In Worthington Smith’s _Man the Primeval Savage_ there is a very vividly
written description of early Palæolithic life, from which much of the
following account is borrowed. In the original, Mr. Worthington Smith
assumes a more extensive social life, a larger community, and a more
definite division of labour among its members than is altogether
justifiable in the face of such subsequent writings as J. J. Atkinson’s
memorable essay on Primal Law.[32] For the little tribe Mr. Worthington
Smith described there has been substituted, therefore, a family group
under the leadership of one Old Man, and the suggestions of Mr. Atkinson
as to the behaviour of the Old Man have been worked into the sketch.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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