MEN OF THE OLD STONE AGE
Henry Fairfield Osborn
Paperback
(RareBooksClub.com, Sept. 13, 2013)
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1915 edition. Excerpt: ...and diminution in numbers would not account for their total extinction, and we are inclined to attribute this to the entrance into the whole Neanderthal country of western Europe toward the close of Lower Palaeolithic times of a new and highly superior race. Archaeologists find traces of a new culture and industry in certain Mousterian stations preceding the disappearance of the typical Mousterian industry. Such a mingling is found in the valley of the Somme in northern France. From this scanty evidence we may infer that the new race competed for a time with the Neanderthals before they dispossessed them of their principal stations and drove them out of the country or killed them in battle. The Neanderthals, no doubt, fought with wooden weapons and with the stone-headed dart and spear, but there is no evidence that they possessed the bow and arrow. There is, on the contrary, some possibility that the newly arriving Cro-Magnon race may have been familiar with the bow and arrow, for a barbed arrow or spear head appears in drawings of a later stage of Cr6-Magnon history, the so-called Magdalenian. It is thus possible, though very far from being demonstrated, that when the Cro-Magnons entered western Europe, at the dawn of the Upper Palaeolithic, they were armed with weapons which, with their superior intelligence and physique, would have given them a very great advantage in contests with the Neanderthals. CHAPTER IV OPENING OF THE UPPER PALEOLITHIC--THE GRIMALDI RACE--ARRIVAL OF THE CRO-MAGNON RACE AND OF THE AURIGNACIAN INDUSTRY--GEOGRAPHIC AND CLIMATIC CONDITIONS--MAMMALIAN LIFE--CHARACTERISTICS AND HABITS OF THE CROMAGNONS--DISTRIBUTION OF THE AURIGNACIAN INDUSTRY--THE BIRTH OF ART--ORIGIN AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE SOLUTREAN INDUSTRY--BRUNN...