Museum Notes

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22513, 22 September 1938, Page 2 (Supplement)

Museum Notes

THE OLD STONE AGE

(By R. S. Duff)

‘When' i ”rrian first tore-down a was no need for anything better. bowh a .A.MM'te. n’Sr'hiaa.^S self from some beast of prey, he g re _ ,He roamed naked like an showed himself a distinctly-differ* animal, living on roots or small ent kind of animaL Since then the . animals *jmd stealing eggs from story of man’s progress has been birds* nests? ~ the story of the ever more clever probably we would still be byways in which he learned to use ing that life to-day- and carefully his hands, . chipping the same type of handThe first human tools were prob- axe had It not been for the ice age. ably spears or clubs of wood, but For i about 50,000 8.C., the ice because wood could not survive started to invade Europe. The trees the passage of time, we do not died, many animals died out or know. moved away, the air became bitterly The earliest tools which have sur- cold. . . . vlved are made of flint or stone. For the . first time man had to These first appear in great sum- struggle to survive. He needed

bers in the levels dating from the warm period before the last ice age, probably about 100,000 B.C. They are simply jagged pieces of flint, looking rather luce road metal, but so many ere found to«thar-and they ere all so much alike-that undoubtedly they were lashloned by man and used as tools. Three of these primitive tools' are shown in the flfiistcatioßL, , Apparently these tools repreStnud the heightof human Invention of that time, because for 50,000 years.‘there was no change in the manner of fashioning them. The genius who first knocked two stones, together until one was chipped into a jagged hand-axe, unwittingly set a fashion yrhich lasted for 50,000 years. . Nobody* dared to make the slightest change on the •riginal model. And indeed, there

shelter, he needed clothes, ' he needed fire, he needed better tools. Man succeeded wonderfully. Soon we find him sheltering in caves. Inside the caves fire was' always 1 kept smouldering, and food was cooked. To. supply warm clothing and food, much larger animals were bunted. ■ Most of all there was a new pattern in atone tool* inataad Of tusiag the core as he had for 50,000 years, man now used the Hakes or chips which ; had . previously been thrown away. These provided tools with' a sharper edge for cutting skins or meat, or lashing on. to a handle to use as a spear. : , When 1 the; ice retreated from Europe again the: climate became less cold, but never as warm as it had been. - . And man had learned to make- fire, and to cook meat, to

wear clothes, and to use new types of stone tools. The lessons of the struggle with the ice man .never forgot. He kept on steadily improving his methods of conquering nature : until the Old Stone Age closed about 8000 B.C. • .. ■ This period iscalled the Stone Age because it was the period of the first known tools, and these were made of stone. - It, is called the Old Stone Age (Palaeolithic): because these first stone tools were chipped into form, instead of being ground into shape on a grindstone as in ‘the New Stone Age, the story of which will be told in' “The Press Junior” next week.