[37]It would be simple enough if we could equate the beginning of history with the introduction of writing, as is often done. The equation holds good for Egypt where the oldest inscriptions refer to the first identifiable events and personalities and thus, as records of battles and royal names, form the earliest raw material of Egyptian history. But in Mesopotamia this is not so; there civilization took shape, and writing appeared, well before historical documents in the narrow sense came into being. We shall see that this difference between Egypt and Mesopotamia was due to the different purposes which writing and art were made to serve; but it illustrates that generalizations about history and prehistory are hazardous even within a limited field.
[38]So, e.g. J. S. Slotkin, “Reflections on Collingwood’s Idea of History,” in Antiquity, No. 86 (June 1948), 99. Against this misconception see Helmuth Plessner, Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch, Berlin, 1928.
[39]For a penetrating study of this matter see Gertrude Rachel Levy, The Gate of Horn, A Study of the Religious Conceptions of the Stone Age and Their Influence upon European Thought, Faber & Faber (London, 1948).
[40]On the so-called Libyan palette: Capart, Primitive Art in Egypt, 236-7, Figs. 175, 176.
[41]L. Borchardt, Das Grabdenkmal des Königs Sahure, II (Leipzig, 1913), 10 and Plate I.
[42]W. F. Edgerton and J. A. Wilson, Historical Records of Ramses III (Chicago, 1936), 67 f. Wreszinski, Atlas zur altaegyptischen Kulturgeschichte, III, Plate 66.
[43]Sir Aurel Stein, An Archaeological Tour in Gedrosia (Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India, No. 43), 34; cf. 6-7.
[44]R. J. & L. Braidwood, in Antiquity XXV, No. 96 (December 1950), 189-95.
[45]D. A. E. Garrod and D. M. A. Bates, The Stone Age Of Mount Carmel, Oxford, 1937.
[46]These “teeth” show a peculiar gloss produced by the silica in the stalks of grasses so that we are certain that they were used for cutting cereals. (Cecil E. Curwen in Antiquity, IV [1930], 184-6; IX [1935], 62-6.)