To this period succeeded, after the withdrawal of the glaciers, a period called “post-glacial” (or second interglacial period), characterised at first by a continental climate, dry, with a very cold winter, and a short but hot summer, and by flora of the Tundras and steppes. At the end of this epoch, the climate becoming milder, there appeared the flora of the meadows and forests, which has remained to the present day.[343] The harsh climate of the beginning of this period could only be favourable to the preservation and growth of thick-furred animals: the mammoth or elephant with curved tusks (Elephas primigenius), the rhinoceros with divided nostrils (R. tichorinus), the reindeer (Cervus tarandus), the saiga, the lemming, etc.
The man who inhabited Europe during the two overflows of the glaciers and the two interglacial periods is known to us chiefly by the stone implements which are found in the strata of these periods, along with the bones of animals which are now extinct or which have migrated into other regions. It must not be inferred from this that palæolithic man used no other but stone tools or weapons. The finds of objects made out of bone, horn, stag’s horn, shell, and wood belonging to these periods are there to bear witness to the contrary. Only these finds are much more rare, on account of the ease with which bone, horn, and especially wood, decompose after a more or less prolonged stay in the ground. Basing their conclusions on the variety of the forms of the stone implements and partly on the frequent occurrence of bone objects, palæethnologists have divided the two interglacial periods which form their stone age or palæolithic period into two or three periods, according to country. It would have been better, in my opinion, to have replaced in the present instance the word “period” by the term “state of civilisation,” for these periods are far from being synchronous throughout the whole of Europe; the Vogules and the Samoyeds were in the “stone age” hardly a century ago.
Nevertheless, for certain defined regions, we may consider it settled that the first so-called Chellean “period,” characterised by the “knuckle-duster,” belongs, as we have seen (p. [302]), to the first interglacial period, and that the others coincide with the second (Boule). In a general way, we may distinguish in the latter a more ancient period, characterised by the abundance of mammoth bones and by smaller and more varied implements than the Chellean tool; and a more recent period characterised by the presence of the reindeer in Central and Western Europe, by the frequent occurrence of bone tools, and by the appearance of the graphic arts, at least in certain regions.
The first of these “periods” is known as the Mousterian; it is well represented in France, Belgium, southern Germany, Bohemia, and England.[344]
FIG. 85.—Quaternary art (Magdalenian period):
B, dagger of reindeer horn with sculptured haft,
Laugerie-Haute (Dordogne); A, “Baton of
command” with carving (La Madeleine, Dord.);
two-thirds natural size.
(After G. and A. de Mortillet.)
Instead of a single flint implement, the “knuckle-duster,” which was used variously in the Chellean period, with or without a handle, as an axe, hammer, and dagger, a variety of implements make their appearance in the Mousterian period, and, among others, tools needed in the manufacture of garments, blades to open and skin animals, scrapers to make their hides supple, sharp-edged awls for cutting the skin and when necessary making cords or straps from it, for piercing it and making button-holes.[345] On the other hand, the use of the bow does not seem to have been known, for in the Mousterian deposits there have not been found any arrow-heads either in flint or bone. These arrow-heads appear only in the next period, generally called the reindeer age; in France styled, according to the classification of G. de Mortillet, the Magdalenian period.[346] The man of this period was still in the hunting stage, but had more perfect hunting weapons than in the Mousterian period; he was also occasionally a fisher, and probably reared the reindeer. But his especial characteristic in certain regions, as in the south-west of France, is that he was a consummate artist. He has left us admirable carvings (Fig. [85], B), and engravings on bone most expressive in design (Fig. [85], A).[347]
After the second glacial period, the era of great overflows and withdrawals of the glaciers came to a definite close for Central Europe; but it continued in the north, in Scotland, and especially around the Baltic, even as it is still prolonged to our own day in Greenland and Iceland.
According to Geikie and De Geer, the glaciers advanced and withdrew thrice again in Scandinavia and Scotland after continental Europe was almost entirely rid of them (Geikie’s fourth to sixth glacial periods).[348]