THE DRAMA OF THE PAST
Men first became men when evolution had carried them to a certain point. This was the point where the eye-hand-brain co-ordination was good enough so that tools could be made. When tools began to be made according to sets of lasting habits, we know that men had appeared. This happened over a half million years ago. The stage for the play may have been as broad as all of Europe, Africa, and Asia. At least, it seems unlikely that it was only one little region that saw the beginning of the drama.
Glaciers and different climates came and went, to change the settings. But the play went on in the same first act for a very long time. The men who were the players had simple roles. They had to feed themselves and protect themselves as best they could. They did this by hunting, catching, and finding food wherever they could, and by taking such protection as caves, fire, and their simple tools would give them. Before the first act was over, the last of the glaciers was melting away, and the players had added the New World to their stage. If we want a special name for the first act, we could call it The Food-Gatherers.
There were not many climaxes in the first act, so far as we can see. But I think there may have been a few. Certainly the pace of the first act accelerated with the swing from simple gathering to more intensified collecting. The great cave art of France and Spain was probably an expression of a climax. Even the ideas of burying the dead and of the “Venus” figurines must also point to levels of human thought and activity that were over and above pure food-getting.