The Age of the Gods

III. The Dawn of the Neolithic Age and the Rise of the Peasant Culture in Europe

32 iii The Dawn of the Neolithic Age and the Rise of the Peasant Culture in Europe i. the post-glacial period and the epipalÊolithic cultures of europe The change of climate which resulted from the passing of glacial conditions, and the emergence of Northern europe from the great icesheets that had covered it, did not, as one might suppose, lead to any immediate progress in european culture. on the contrary, the passing of the glacial age seems to have been in many respects a time of retrogression and cultural decadence. The highly specialised hunting culture of Magdalenian times could not survive the passing of the cold, dry steppe conditions to which it had adapted itself, and it was many centuries and probably thousands of years before the higher form of civilisation , known as neolithic, was able to acclimatise itself to european conditions. The palæolithic age was characterised by a purely hunting culture, by the use of chipped flint and carved bone implements and by a semi-nomadic way of life, in which the only permanent forms of habitation were caves and rock shelters. The men of the neolithic culture , on the other hand, followed a settled way of life in huts and villages , practising agriculture and the breeding of domestic animals, and manufacturing pottery and implements of ground and polished stone. It was formerly believed by the earlier students of prehistory that there was an actual gap between the disappearance of palæolithic man and the coming of the new culture, in which europe was an uninhabited The Neolithic Age in Europe 33 desert. Modern discoveries, however, have shown that there was no such hiatus, and that there exists a whole series of cultures which belong to the intermediate period, and are known as mesolithic or epipal æolithic. They are characterised on the one hand by the survival of the native tradition of the later palæolithic european cultures, and on the other by the introduction of new cultural influences from outside. The most important of these was due to the great expansion of the late Capsian culture from the south, to which we have already referred, and which is known outside its original home as the Tardenoisian culture. It is characterised by the use of minute flint implements of geometrical form, which are found throughout Western europe, and as far east as Poland and south Russia. This culture spread north with the change in climatic conditions and the advance of the forests, and it undoubtedly marks the coming of a new wave of population from the Mediterranean region or North africa, perhaps the ancestors of the modern Mediterranean race. The actual human remains that date from this period are, however, curiously mixed. a small number of broad-headed (brachycephalic) men are found both at ofnet in Bavaria and at Mugem in Portugal, and mark the first certain appearance in europe of the broad-headed type of man to which the alpine race of modern europe belongs. The majority of the Mugem skulls, however, are dolichocephalic and belong to a curiously primitive type with a prognathous jaw and a small brain, which differs alike from the races of Palæolithic europe and from the true Mediterranean type. The earlier Magdalenian population of europe did not, however, entirely disappear, though the change in climatic conditions rendered the preservation of its old culture impossible. It was partially submerged by the wave of new population, and the mingling of the two streams of influence gave rise to the mixed forms of culture known as the azilian and the Maglemosian. The former is widely distributed in a sporadic way from southern france and scotland to switzerland and south germany. Like the Magdalenians , the azilians used bone implements, especially flat harpoons made of deers’ horn, though the forms are coarse and degenerate, but they also possessed the minute flint implements of geometrical form that are characteristic of the Capsian-Tardenoisian culture. The most 34 The Age of the Gods remarkable remains of the azilian culture, however, are the pebbles painted with conventional signs and ornaments, which are found in southern france. These are evidently connected with the conventional designs of the spanish rock paintings which belong to the last phase of Capsian art. Their significance is undoubtedly religious, and it is possible that they served a similar purpose to the churingas or “ancestor stones” of the modern australian natives, with...