Ancient Man in Britain — Reading Companion

he continuity of culture during the Palæolithic Age, caused by the arrival in Western Europe of the ancestors of Modern Man. The advent of the Crô-Magnons in Europe "represents on the cultural side", as Professor Elliot Smith says in _Primitive Man_, "the most momentous event in its history".

Some urge that the term "Palæolithic" should now be discarded altogether, but its use has become so firmly established that archæologists are loth to dispense with it. The first period of human culture has, however, had to be divided into "Lower" and "Upper Palæolithic"--Lower closing with the disappearance of the Neanderthals, and Upper beginning with the arrival of the Crô-Magnons. These periods embrace the sub-divisions detected during the latter half of last century by the French archæologists, and are now classified as follows:

2. Chellean (named after the town of Chelles, east of Paris).

3. Acheulian (named after St. Acheul in Somme valley).

4. Mousterian (named after the caves of Le Moustier in the valley of the River Vézère).

1. Aurignacian (named after Aurignac, Haute Garonne).

2. Solutrean (named after Solutré, Saône-et-Loire).

3. Magdalenian (named after La Madeleine in the valley of the River Vézère).

Then follows, in France, the Azilian stage (named after Mas d'Azil, a town at the foot of the Pyrenees) which is regarded as the link between Upper Palæolithic and Neolithic. But in Western Europe, including Britain, there were really three distinct cultures during the so-called "Transition Period". These are the Azilian, the Tardenoisian, and the Maglemosian. These cultures were associated with the movements of new peoples in Europe.

The pre-Chellean flints (also called Eoliths) were wrought by the pre-Neanderthals. Chellean probably represents the earliest work in Europe of a pre-Neanderthal type like Piltdown man. The most characteristic implement of this phase is the _coup de poing_ or pear-shaped "hand axe", which was at first roughly shaped and unsymmetrical. It was greatly improved during the Acheulian stage, and after being finely wrought in Mousterian times, when it was not much used, was supplanted by smaller and better chipped implements. The Neanderthals practised the Mousterian industry.

A profound change occurred when the Aurignacian stage of culture was inaugurated by the intruding Crô-Magnons. Skilled workers chipped flint in a new way, and, like the contemporary inhabitants of North Africa, shaped artifacts from bone; they also used reindeer horn, and the ivory tusks of mammoths. The birth of pictorial art took place in Europe after the Crô-Magnons arrived.

It would appear that the remnants of the Neanderthals in the late Mousterian stage of culture were stimulated by the arrival of the Crô-Magnons to imitate new flint forms and adopt the new methods of workmanship. There is no other evidence to indicate that the Crô-Magnons came into contact with communities of the Neanderthals. In these far-off days Europe was thinly peopled by hunters who dwelt in caves. The climate was cold, and the hairy mammoth and the reindeer browsed in the lowlands of France and Germany. Italy was linked with Africa; the grass-lands of North Africa stretched southward across the area now known as the Sahara desert, and dense forests fringed the banks of the River Nile and extended eastward to the Red Sea.

Neanderthal man had originally entered Europe when the climate was much milder than it is in our own time. He crossed over from Africa by the Italian land-bridge, and he found African fauna, including species of the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, lion, and the hyæna, jackal, and sabre-tooth tiger in Spain, France, Germany. Thousands of years elapsed and the summers became shorter, and the winters longer and more severe, until the northern fauna began to migrate southward, and the African fauna deserted the plains and decaying forests of Europe. Then followed the Fourth Glacial phase, and when it was passing away the Neanderthals, who had long been in the Mousterian phase of culture, saw bands of Crô-Magnons prospecting and hunting in southern Europe. The new-comers had migrated from some centre of culture in North Africa, and appear to have crossed over the Italian land-bridge. It is unlikely that many, if any, entered Europe from the east. At the time the Black Sea was more than twice its present size, and glaciers still blocked the passes of Asia Minor.