STONE AGE, or AGE OF STONE, is a term used in archeology to denote the condition of a people using stone as the material for the cutting tools and weapons which, in a higher condition of culture, were made of metals. The :lc pression "age," when used in this con nection, is not therefore significant of a fixed period in chronology, but im plies merely the time, longer or shorter, earlier or later, during which the condi tion subsisted. The duration of such a condition must necessarily have varied from various causes in different areas, and chiefly in consequence of contact with higher degrees of culture. Popula tions placed in remote situations, and on that account remaining uninfluenced by such contact—like the islanders of the South Pacific and the Eskimos of the ex treme North for instance—have re mained in their stone age to the 20th century. On the other hand, the popula tions of the European area, in portions of which there were successive centers of high culture and civilization from a very early period, had all emerged from their stone age, through the use of bronze, many centuries before the Christian era.
The progress of early culture in Eu rope seems to have been from the South and East, N. and W., so that the emer gence of the different populations from their age of stone was accomplished shores of the Mediterranean, they were contemporary with animals which are now either wholly or locally extinct, such as the mammoth, wooly rhinoceros, cave lion, cave bear, and hyaena, the reindeer, musk ox, and urus. It is an open ques tion to what extent this change of fauna implies a change of climate, but from the geological conditions in which the flint implements of the earliest types are found it is evident that, though exten sive changes must have taken place since they were deposited in the river basins, much earlier in Southern and Eastern Europe than in the North and West. But while the stone age of different areas is thus not necessarily synchronous, it seems to be true of all European areas that this is the earliest condition in which man has appeared upon them.
There are no data by which the period of the early stone-using populations of Europe can be defined, even approxi mately. But in England, Belgium, and France, and across the Continent to the they belong exclusively to the later de posits of the Quaternary period.
The stone age implements of Europe have been divided into two classes—the pakeolithic or older stone implements and the neolithic or newer stone imple ments. This is equivalent to dividing the stone age of Europe into two periods, earlier and later, as the paIxolithic im plements are found associated with the extinct and locally extinct fauna, while the neolithic implements are found as 3ociated with the existing fauna. The palmolithic stone implements are distin guished as a class from the neolithic by their greater rudeness of form, and by the facts that they are exclusively of flint and have been manufactured by chipping only. The neolithic stone im plements on the other hand are of finer forms, often highly polished, and made of many varieties of stone besides flint.
The palmolithic implements of flint are mostly so rude that it is impossible to apply to them names indicative of spe cific use. Those from the river gravels are chiefly flakes, trimmed and un trimmed, for cutting and scraping; pointed implements, some almond-shaped or tongue-shaped; and more obtusely pointed implements, with rounded and often undressed butts. There is also a series of scraper-like implements, and another of oval sharp-rimmed imple ments, which are more carefully finished than most of the other varieties. The flint implements from the caves present a greater variety of form. They are generally characterized by secondary working, and are therefore much more carefully finished, often in many re spects approaching closely to neolithic types.
From the caves also come a series of implements of bone and of carvings on bone which have excited much astonish ment on account of the extraordinary contrast between their artistic character and the extreme rudeness of many of the implements of stone with which they are associated. These bone implements consist of well-made needles, borers, javelin or harpoon points barbed on one or both sides, and implements of reindeer horn of unknown use, which are usually carved in relief or ornamented with in cised representations of animals, and oc casionally of human figures. The ani mals, as for instance a group of rein deer from the cave of La Madeleine, Dordogne, are drawn with wonderful faithfulness, freedom, and spirit.