THE STONE AGE.
As has been mentioned on a previous page (96), the period when man had no better implements than he could manufacture out of wood, stone, or bone appears to have extended over most of the earth's surface for a far greater length of time than has elapsed since the discovery of metals. It has been divided into two parts—the first, in which chipped stones exclusively were employed, being known as the Paloolithic, or Older Stone Age; the second and later, when many of the implements were fin ished by grinding and rubbing them to a smooth surface, receiving the name of the Neolithic Age, or that of Polished Stone (pi. 1, figs. 10, 12).
No nation has been known to scientific observation which corresponded to the condition of life in the palmolithic period. That age was contem porary in Europe with the time when the cave-bear, the mammoth, and later the reindeer, inhabited the forests of what is now France and Ger many. Instruments quite characteristic of it have been exhumed in Spain, Portugal, and both Northern and Southern Africa. The vicinity of Cairo in Lower, and of Luxor in Upper, Egypt has disclosed them. In Pales tine and in several locations in India explorers have come upon them, while in America the Trenton gravels, the glacial deposits of the Upper Mississippi, the California gold-bearing deposits, and the mud-beds of the Pampas have all furnished chipped stone implements of the character of those of the palmolithic beds of Europe. Of course, others like them have been found in later strata, but the peculiarity of pakeolithic "finds" is that no polished implements are discovered with them, and their forms are always few in number and simple in design.
From a study of such specimens it is deduced that in this, the earliest and universal condition of the human race, its members were exclusively hunters or fishermen or subsisted on natural products ; agriculture was totally unknown, and no animal, not even the dog, was domesticated ; religion and government, if they were organized at all, were of a lower, more imperfect character than any now known to us. Buildings were
mere temporary shelters, leaving no trace upon the soil. The population was scanty and little inclined to wander beyond limited precincts.
But even then the traces of positive and constant, although slow, progress are clearly visible. In the oldest stations of the Palaeolithic Age there is not found a trace of ornament nor a sign that the tribes then living knew the simplest of the mechanical powers. In the later deposits we discover small stone mortars, evidently used for mixing paints for the body ; fragments of peroxide of iron which yield a red coloring-matter, and which have seen service ; teeth of animals, shells, and bits of horn, perforated and plainly destined for ornaments ; needles and awls of bone, indicating that clothing was made and worn ; a few rude figures cut from horn, and others engraved on fragments of bone ; and the like,—all going to show that by that time there had grown up a fixed society and a taste for decorative art. Such a people could have been little inferior to the lower tribes of savages of the present day.
The Neolithic Age was introduced into Western Europe apparently by an incursion of tribes from the east or north-east. Its appearance is sig nalled by a superior variety of stone implements, frequently polished ; by the traces of agriculture, the rearing of domestic animals, the art of making clothing from vegetable fibre by spinning and weaving, the manufacture of pottery, and such simple arts. The inhabitants at that time corresponded in point of culture about to the Indian tribes of the United States at the era of the discovery. They lived in towns and cleared the forests. The oldest of the lake-dwellings, built on piles in the water, occurring in the Swiss lakes and in the plains of the Po, belong to this period and stage of development. (See STONE AGE and illus. Vol. II.)