Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/25

Prehistoric Man French and Spanish caverns it is clear that man had learned by this time to make flint knives, drills, scrapers, and hammers and with these could work bone and reindeer horn into needles, spoons, and ladles. He also learned to carve pictures on his DRAWINGS CARVED BY STONE AGE MAN ON IVORY implements and adorn the walls of caves with paintings of fish, bison> deer, and wild horses. These are sometimes beautifully executed and very lifelike. They represent the earliest examples of human art and may go back fifteen or twenty thousand years. 1 III. THE LATE STONE AGE 8. The Late Stone Age. At length the climate grew warmer, much as it is today. The traces left by the ice would lead us to think that it withdrew northward for the last time probably some ten thousand years ago. The progress which man had made by this time in a number of important ways marks this period following the final retreat of the ice as the Late Stone Age. During the long, long years known as the Early Stone Age man knew only how to chip or flake his stone weapons. Now, how- ever, he had learned that it was possible to grind the edge of a stone ax or chisel, as we grind tools of metal today/ He was also able to drill a hole in a stone ax head and insert a handle. With the new tools that he had learned to make he could con- siderably improve his conditions of living. First, with his ground 1 According to geologists the ice has advanced and retreated four times. It is now believed that stone implements were first made in the third warm interval, and that it was the cold of the fourth glacial period which drove men to their cave life. This period may be called the Middle Stone Age. For a fuller account of early man and the glacial periods see Breasted, Ancient Times, chap. i.