Solutrean Flint Workers Invade Europe
Toward the close of Aurignacian times comes a remarkable people called the Solutreans. They appear quite suddenly as invading hunters, and they disappear as suddenly. Their culture does not evolve out of the Aurignacian, and it does not evolve into the next culture, the Magdalenian. The Solutreans stayed a relatively short time in Europe; Braidwood once gave them 10,000 years, but Mather and Peake and Fleure only 500.[25] Guesses as to when they arrived vary as widely. Peake and Fleure think it was about 12,000 years ago, while Zeuner puts them back to 67,000 years before our time.[26] Radiocarbon dates indicate only 18,000 years ago.
Three Aurignacian types that suggest the Negroid, the Caucasoid, and the Mongoloid. (After Peake and Fleure, 1927.)
THE MEANING OF SCRAPERS
“A primitive thing called a scraper is crude and not at all eloquent until you realize that it points to much else. It means not only a scraper, but a thing to be scraped, most likely a hide; therefore it means a growing ability to kill, to take off the hide and cure it. That is just the beginning, for a scraper also shows a knowledge of how to scrape, and a desire for scraping, and enough leisure (beyond the struggle to get food) to allow time for scraping. All this means self-restraint and thought for the future, and it implies a certain confidence in the ways of life, because no one would be liable to go to all the trouble of scraping if he did not have reasonable hope of enjoying the results of the work.”—George R. Stewart, in Man: An Autobiography. (Left and center, after MacCurdy, 1924; right, after Leakey, 1935.)
Where the Solutreans came from is another of the unsolved riddles of archaeology. Until recently, they were generally supposed to have come out of western Asia, because the most primitive of their remarkable tools were found plentifully in Hungary and sparsely in western Europe. For sixty years Solutrean points were found no farther south than northern and eastern Spain. Now, however, points of Solutrean type have begun to appear in North Africa, Egypt, and Kenya Colony. Here they are jumbled together in the same strata with Mousterian points and the tanged points of the Aterians, a purely African people. Hence certain archaeologists are inclined to believe that the Solutreans may have originated in Africa as an offshoot of the Mousterians (see illustration, [page 105]).
In spite of their fondness for the chase, the Solutreans of Europe continued the interest that the Aurignacians had shown in art—or so at least certain authorities who admire the relief carvings of Le Roc in France tell us. But their chief distinction is that they knew the craft of pressure flaking typical of Folsom and Eden cultures in the New World. The Solutreans are represented mainly by thin, willow- or laurel-shaped tools. By pressing—not pounding—a piece of bone or wood against the surface of the flint they flaked off slivers across the tool in a way that no one equaled in the Old World until the Egyptians had entered the neolithic and agricultural age many thousands of years later. The Solutreans also made small points with a tang at one side (see illustrations, pages [105] and [165]). This was for the purpose of fastening the flint to a shaft; but whether it was used with a bow or a spear-thrower is not clear. (Incidentally, points of somewhat this shape appear in the New World.) At about the same time, the Aterians of North Africa used a very crude tanged arrowhead; and in the late Aurignacian the Font Robert point with its rude tang appeared. The superior spear point of the Solutreans seems the natural product of a people who were particularly active and energetic in the chase. In a single camping place they left 35,000 tools of flint.
THE TANGED POINT
It was only in the late years of the Old Stone Age that man learned to put a tang on a point and so make it easier to fasten to a shaft. This advance may have been made in connection with the spear-thrower, but it seems more likely that the arrow brought forth this technological refinement. Only Solutrean man and the American Paleo-Indian made truly efficient points. (The Solutrean, after Burkitt, 1933; the Font Robert at right, after Burkitt, 1933—at left, after MacCurdy, 1924; the Aterian, after Plant, 1942.)
A laurel-leaf Solutrean point from France, ½ natural size. (After MacCurdy, 1924.)
A tool to make a tool. Such burins, with a transverse edge at the top, rather like that of a chisel, were used by the Magdalenians to shape bone implements and engrave designs upon them. (After Wilson, 1898.)
Following these Asiatics, a people whose culture was very similar to that of the Aurignacians appeared in Europe. They were the Magdalenians, and they carried on the general traits of the men of Aurignac and added to them (see illustration, [page 101]). They made better blades and burins. (Long, slim blades of the Aurignacian-Magdalenian type have been found in Mexico, and there are burins in Alaska and northern Asia.) The burins helped the Magdalenians to make new implements of bone such as needles, fishhooks, harpoons, and spear-throwers. Besides all this, they brought to perfection the arts of painting and sculpture which used to be too much credited to the Aurignacians (see illustrations, pages [110] and [114]). The magnificent polychromes of the Magdalenians in the Lascaux and Font-de-Gaume Caves in France and the Altamira Cave in Spain testify to the genius of this people. The customary dispute exists about their time of activity. One authority puts it from 11,500 to 8,500 years ago, and another from 70,000 to 25,000.[27] Radiocarbon indicates a probable range of 17,000 to 10,000 years ago.
Magdalenian harpoon head, 4¾ inches long, made from an antler and discovered in the rock shelter of La Madeleine, where engraved art of early man—a picture of a mammoth—was first found, by Lartet, in 1864. (After Lartet and Christy, 1875.)
The first illustration of a blade, probably Magdalenian. (After Mercati, 1717.)