The Circle of Knowledge: A Classified, Simplified, Visualized Book of Answers

Part 57

Chapter 572,082 wordsPublic domain

Evidence is, however, that it is not always possible to draw any clear line between the Old and New Stone Ages. In one respect the former was towards its close even in advance of the latter, and quite a “Paleolithic School of Art” was developed during a long period of steady progress in the sheltered Vézère valley, of South France. Here were produced some of those remarkable stone, horn, and even ivory scrapers, gravers, harpoons, ornaments and statuettes with carvings on the round, and skilful etchings of seals, fishes, reindeer, harnessed horses, mammoths, snakes, and man himself, which also occur in other districts.

In Tunisia many implements lie under a thick bed of Pleistocene limestone deposited by a river which has since disappeared. The now absolutely lifeless Libyan plateau is strewn with innumerable worked flints, showing that early man inhabited this formerly fertile region before it was reduced by the slowly changing climate to a waste of sands. The same story of man’s great age is told by discoveries in Burma, India, North and especially South America, and now also in Great Britain.

MAN IN THE NEW STONE AGE

Outstanding features of the New Stone Age are the Swiss and other lake-dwellings, the Danish peat-beds with their varied contents, the shell-mounds occurring on the seaboard in many parts of the world.

In the more civilized regions, such as Egypt, Babylonia, parts of Asia Minor, and the Ægean lands, the Stone Ages were at an early date followed by a period vaguely designated as “prehistoric,” during which stone as the material of human implements was gradually replaced by the metals, first copper, then various copper alloys (arsenic, sulphur, nickel, cobalt, zinc, and especially tin) generally called bronze, lastly iron.

Thus were constituted the so-called Metal Ages, during which, however, overlappings were everywhere so frequent that in many localities it is quite impossible to draw any well-marked dividing lines between the successive metal periods. Indeed a direct transition from Stone to Iron may be suspected in some places, and in any case the pure copper period appears to have nowhere been of long duration except in America, where there was no iron and little bronze.

THE AGE OF LETTERS OR PICTOGRAPHS

Besides the metals, letters also, or at least pictorial writings such as the old rock carvings of Upper Egypt, were introduced in the Prehistoric Age, which comprises that transitional period dim memories of which lingered on far into historic times. It was an age of popular myths, folklore, demi-gods, heroes, traditions of real events, and even philosophic theories on man and his surroundings, which supplied ready to hand the copious materials afterwards worked up by the early poets, founders of new religions, and later lawgivers.

So also in China the early historians still remembered the still earlier “Age of the Three Rulers,” when people lived in caves, ate wild fruits and uncooked food, drank the blood of animals, and wore the skins of wild beasts (our Old Stone Age). Later they became less rude, learned to obtain fire by friction, and built themselves habitations of wood and foliage (our New Stone Age).

Of strictly historic times the most characteristic feature is the general use of letters, most fruitful of human inventions, since by its means everything worth preserving was perpetuated, and all useful knowledge thus tended to become accumulative. Writing systems, as we understand them, were not suddenly introduced, but gradually evolved from pictures representing things and ideas to conventional signs or symbols which first represent words, as in the Chinese script and our ciphers, and then articulate sounds, as in our alphabet. Between the two extremes--the pictograph and the letter--there are various intermediate forms, such as the rebus and the full syllable, and these transitional forms are largely preserved both in the Egyptian and Babylonian systems, which thus help to show how the pure phonetic symbols were finally reached. That was probably six thousand years ago, since we find various ancient scripts widely diffused over the Greek Archipelago (Crete, Cyprus, Asia Minor) in very early times. The hieroglyphic and cuneiform systems whence they originated were very much older, since the rock inscriptions of Upper Egypt are prior to all historic records, while the Mesopotamian city of Nippur already possessed half-pictorial, half-phonetic documents some six thousand years before the New Era.

=DEVELOPMENT OF THE HUMAN RACE THROUGH THE AGES=

This chart falls within the =Cenozoic= (_sē´no-zō´ik_), or “Recent life,” Period of the Earth and should be compared with it. Estimated Age of the Cenozoic Period, 3,000,000 years.

From the pictorial and plastic remains recovered from these two earliest seats of the higher cultures it is now placed beyond doubt that all the great divisions of the human family had at that time already been fully developed. Even in the New Stone Age, the present European type had been thoroughly established, as shown by the remains of the “Cro-Magnon Race,” so called from the cave of that name in Perigord, France, where the first specimens were discovered. In Egypt, where a well-developed social and political organization may be traced back to the seventh century B. C., Professor Petrie discovered in 1897 the portrait statue of a prince of the fifth dynasty (3700 B. C.) showing regular Caucasic features. Still older is the portrait of the Babylonian King Sargon (3800 B. C.), also with handsome features which might be either Semitic or even Aryan. Thus the Caucasic, that is, the highest human type, had already been not only evolved but spread over a wide area (Europe, Egypt, Mesopotamia) some thousands of years before the New Era. The other chief types (Mongol, Negro, and even Negrito) are also clearly portrayed on early Egyptian monuments, so that all the primary groups had already reached maturity probably before the close of the Old Stone Age.

But these primary groups did not remain stationary in their several original homes; on the contrary they have been subject to great and continual fluctuations throughout historic times. Armed with a general knowledge of letters and other cultural appliances, the higher races soon took a foremost place in the general progress of mankind, and gradually acquired a marked ascendency, not only over the less cultured peoples, but to a great extent over the forces of nature herself. With the development of navigation, and improved methods of locomotion, inland seas, barren wastes, and mountain ranges ceased to present insurmountable obstacles to their movements, which have never been completely arrested, and are still going on.

HOW THE RACES ARE CLASSIFIED

On the basis of bodily characteristics, including form, color and features, modern ethnologists have divided mankind into four primary groups, or families: the Caucasian, Mongolian (or Tartar), Negro and American; or, according to color, the _white_, _yellow_, _black_ and _red_ races. It must not be supposed that these types were sharply marked off from one another; indeed, there must have been a great range of varieties then, as now, due to the conditions under which man lived, as well as to actual race mixtures.

It is probable, however, that all these primary groups had reached definite characteristics before the close of the Stone Age.

The term Caucasian is taken from the mountain-range between the Black and Caspian seas, near which region the finest physical specimens of man have always been found. Mongolian is derived from the wandering races that inhabited the plateaus of central Asia. Negro is the Spanish word for “black.” American is applied to the red, or copper-colored, race found in this continent when it was discovered.

The sub-joined table brings into parallel columns the chief distinguishing characteristics of the races:

=PHYSICAL AND MENTAL CHARACTERS OF THE PRIMARY HUMAN GROUPS=