Mr. Wells gives a long description of later Paleolithic Man (pages 51–56). In the course of this description he tells us (on page 54) that later Paleolithic Man disappeared and that a new culture took his place, possessing (what Paleolithic Man had not) domesticated animals, a knowledge of husbandry, bows and arrows, and the rest of it.
This, of course, is the orthodox doctrine of the famous Gap between Paleolithic Man and Neolithic Man on which our generation were all brought up. It is true that there are now guesses at the discovery of a link between them; still the gap is very marked.
He ends up with a summary of the whole affair on page 55, carried over to page 56, where the section ends.
Now, in the middle of this description of later Paleolithic Man (who, remember, had no bows and arrows), he has a set of paragraphs (on page 53) describing the well-known fact that these men executed drawings on rock surfaces. On the same page is given a specimen of these drawings, and above it, by way of title, the caption, “Mural Painting by Paleolithic Man.” This mural painting is nothing else but bows and arrows! It is a picture of four men hunting with large bows, three of them actually shooting arrows, and the unfortunate animals stuck full of arrows so that there may be no doubt.
Yet in the course of this very same description he says that it is “doubtful if they knew of the bow!” And that phrase comes on page 55, two whole pages after the description of Mural drawings and pictures of bows and arrows.
The division about later Paleolithic Man—who, he has told us, was supplanted by Neolithic Man—comes to an end and a new division begins.
In this new division Mr. Wells suddenly starts to describe a type of Paleolithic Man upon whom the guess has been made that he came at the very end of the process and had a more advanced culture, including bows and arrows.
What is any man to make of such a confusion?
First, Paleolithic Man as an artist, illustrated by a picture of him shooting away like the devil. Then, the casual remark that he was too degraded to shoot at all. Then the end of Paleolithic Man and his replacement by Neolithic Man. Then Paleolithic Man reappearing, pages after, with bows and arrows all complete?
It looks uncommonly as though Mr. Wells had written his first section, putting an end to Paleolithic Man and introducing Neolithic Man, before he had been told of the supposed later Paleolithic men who had bows and arrows: that he put in these latest Paleolithic men as an afterthought.