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
They were in close contact with animals, but they never seemed to have
got to terms with any animal unless it was the horse. They had no dogs.
They had no properly domesticated animals at all. They watched and drew
and killed and ate. They do not seem to have cooked their food. Perhaps
they scorched and grilled it, but they could not have done much more,
because they had no cooking implements. Although they had clay
available, and although there are several Palæolithic clay figures on
record, they had _no pottery_. Although they had a great variety of
flint and bone implements, they never rose to the possibilities of using
timber for permanent shelters or such-like structures. They never made
hafted axes or the like that would enable them to deal with timber.
There is a suggestion in some of the drawings of a fence of stakes in
which a mammoth seems to be entangled. But here we may be dealing with
superimposed scratchings. They had _no buildings_. It is not even
certain that they had tents or huts. They may have had simple skin
tents. Some of the drawings seem to suggest as much. It is doubtful if
they knew of the bow. They left no good arrowheads behind them. Certain
of their implements are said to be “arrow-straighteners” by
distinguished authorities, but that is about as much evidence as we have
of arrows. They may have used sharpened sticks as arrows. They had _no
cultivation_ of grain or vegetables of any sort. Their women were
probably squaws, smaller than the men; the earlier statuettes represent
them as grossly fat, almost as the Bushmen women are often fat to-day.
(But this may not be true of the Cro-Magnards.)
They clothed themselves, it would seem, in skins, if they clothed
themselves at all. These skins they prepared with skill and elaboration,
and towards the end of the age they used bone needles, no doubt to sew
these pelts. One may guess pretty safely that they painted these skins,
and it has even been supposed, printed off designs upon them from bone
cylinders. But their garments were mere wraps; there are no clasps or
catches to be found. They do not seem to have used grass or such-like
fibre for textiles. Their statuettes are naked. They were, in fact,
except for a fur wrap in cold weather, naked painted savages.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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