217. The Neolithic: Its Early Phase
The Neolithic is by original definition the age of polished stone as opposed to the fracturing of stone in the Palæolithic. In a sense, this definition is a true one, at any rate for Europe and the Near East. There is no stone grinding in the Palæolithic and there is in the Neolithic. But since the two stone ages were first discriminated fifty or more years ago, a vast body of knowledge has accumulated about them, with the result that the original criterion has become only an approximate one. The definition of the Neolithic as the age of ground stone is at the present time so over-elementary as to have become inaccurate. A long initial phase of this age did not yet grind stone, but continued to use tools made by the Palæolithic process of chipping. It was not until the latter part of the New Stone Age was reached, what we may call the Full Neolithic, that the grinding and polishing of stone were attempted.
What, then, it is natural to ask, makes the Early Neolithic Age really Neolithic—what in fact separates it from the Palæolithic? It is a cluster of traits; a cluster that grew as the Neolithic progressed; but every one of whose constituents was lacking from the Old Stone Age.