Prehistoric Men

by Robert J. Braidwood

A NEW TRADITION APPEARS

Something new was probably beginning to happen in the European-Mediterranean area about 40,000 years ago, though all the rest of the Old World seems to have been going on as it had been. I can’t be sure of this because the information we are using as a basis for dates is very inaccurate for the areas outside of Europe and the Mediterranean.

We can at least make a guess. In Egypt and north Africa, men were still using the old methods of making stone tools. This was especially true of flake tools of the Levalloisian type, save that they were growing smaller and smaller as time went on. But at the same time, a new tradition was becoming popular in westernmost Asia and in Europe. This was the blade-tool tradition.