CHAPTER XIV
THE GROWTH OF CIVILIZATION: OLD WORLD PREHISTORY AND ARCHÆOLOGY
[211.] Sources of knowledge.—[212.] Chronology of the grand divisions of culture history.—[213.] The Lower and Upper Palæolithic.—[214.] Race influence and regional differentiation in the Lower Palæolithic.—[215.] Upper Palæolithic culture growths and races.—[216.] The Palæolithic aftermath: Azilian.—[217.] The Neolithic: its early phase.—[218.] Pottery and the bow.—[219.] Bone tools.—[220.] The dog.—[221.] The hewn ax.—[222.] The Full Neolithic.—[223.] Origin of domesticated animals and plants.—[224.] Other traits of the Full Neolithic.—[225.] The Bronze Age: Copper and Bronze phases.—[226.] Traits associated with bronze.—[227.] Iron.—[228.] First use and spread of iron.—[229.] The Hallstadt and La Tène Periods.—[230.] Summary of development: Regional differentiation.—[231.] The Scandinavian area as an example.—[232.] The late Palæolithic Ancylus or Maglemose Period.—[233.] The Early Neolithic Litorina or Kitchenmidden Period.—[234.] The Full Neolithic and its subdivisions in Scandinavia.—[235.] The Bronze Age and its periods in Scandinavia.—[236.] Problems of chronology.—[237.] Principles of the prehistoric spread of culture.
211. Sources of Knowledge
The story of the growth and development of culture in the Western Hemisphere which has been sketched in reconstruction in the last chapter is built up from the incomplete information of excavations and the indirect evidence of culture trait distributions and analyses. Earlier than about ten thousand years ago, this hemisphere has no known human history. In the Old World, conditions are doubly different. There is a long primeval record, stretching perhaps a hundred thousand years beyond 8000 B.C., documented much like the subsequent culture history of America, but with a wealth of geological, faunal, and skeletal data to compensate for the loss of ancient cultural evidences in the lapse of time. Secondly, for the last ten thousand years, there is a fuller record than for America. This greater fullness is partly due to the earlier start toward its higher forms which civilization took in the Eastern Hemisphere. And this relatively early advancement brought it about that by 3000 B.C. adequate systems of writing had been achieved in Africa and Asia, so that contemporary inscriptions have been preserved to throw direct light on the thoughts and institutions of the people of that day, and to date the centuries of their rulers for us. These last five thousand years thus belong to history, rather than to prehistory, in some parts of the hemisphere; and they allow many a close inference as to what happened in the previous five thousand years when writing was as yet unknown or its first systems were being evolved.
These ten thousand years since the close of the Old Stone Age, half of them studied by the methods of anthropology, half also by those of history, and the whole forming the richest field in human culture history, are the subjects of the present chapter and the next.
First, however, it is necessary to refer back to the earliest known development of civilization in the Old Stone Age (Chapter [VI]), whose close is our present starting point.
212. Chronology of the Grand Divisions of Culture History
The period of human existence since the first tool was made is generally divided into four grand divisions (§ [66], [67]): the Palæolithic or Old Stone Age; the Neolithic or New Stone Age; the Bronze Age; and the Iron Age. The duration of these four ages is diverse and notably diminishing from earliest to latest. The last three are comprised within the past ten thousand years: 8000 B.C. may be looked upon as a reasonably accurate date for the commencement of the Neolithic. For western Europe, at least, the probable error of this date is not over one or at most two thousand years. Back of this approximately fixed point stretches the immeasurably longer Palæolithic, for the determination of whose duration there is available not even any semi-historical evidence, and which can only be estimated in terms of geological alterations, continental glaciations, and faunal and floral changes—all unsatisfactory means for arriving at an absolute chronology expressible in years.
To a vague 100,000 B.C. as the tentative figure for the beginning of the Palæolithic, and an approximate 8000 B.C. for the commencement of the Neolithic, there can be added 3000 B.C. for the onset of the Bronze and 1000 B.C. of the Iron Age. The last two dates are averages only. The Greek islands, for instance, received bronze about this period, the Orient had it earlier, western Europe not until about 2500 B.C., northern Europe still later. In the same way, iron is well attested for western Asia in the thirteenth century before Christ, for Central Europe and France about 900 B.C., in Scandinavia some centuries later, in fact becoming abundant only shortly before the Roman period.
In the wide sense, the outstanding generalizations derivable from these figures are twofold. As regards the later periods, those of metal and probably the Neolithic, the west lagged behind the east, the north behind the south; Asia preceded and invented, Europe followed and imitated. As regards the entire duration, a tremendous disproportion is observable. The vast bulk of the total time of culture is covered by the Palæolithic: the three following Ages are all squeezed into a tenth of the whole. Within this fraction again the Neolithic takes up half, leaving the two metal Ages to divide the other half between them. There is a clear tendency toward acceleration of development.