THE SECOND STEP IN FLINT KNAPPING
For more accurate work, early man applied a small stick of hardwood or a piece of bone at the proper spot and hit the interposed tool with a mallet of heavy wood or a rock. No one knows who invented this technique—Acheulean, Neanderthal, or later man. (After Holmes, 1919.)
THE THIRD STEP—PRESSURE FLAKING
The discovery that gave early man complete control over the shaping of flints was that a slow and continued pressure would dislodge just the flake he desired. Above, we see how he worked on a small point, and below, to the left, how he chipped thin slivers from a core. (After Holmes, 1919.)
The Neanderthal—with his Mousterian culture—seems to have invaded Europe from Asia toward the end of the third and last interglacial, anywhere from 80,000 to 125,000 years ago, and to have left from 15,000 to 100,000 years ago, depending on what authority you choose, and how that authority dates the last interglacial. Unlike his predecessors, the Neanderthal lived in caves; but that was probably because he was the first man in Europe to survive a glacial winter—tens of thousands of them.
The Neanderthal seems to have disappeared quite suddenly from Europe, taking his Australoid features with him. There are traces of him in Africa, and also in Palestine where he is thought to have produced a hybrid among the Mount Carmel people. Sir Arthur Keith said, in 1915, that the Neanderthal never left Europe, but was merely absorbed into the next peoples. We can see the Neanderthal profile on an occasional passer-by.
Most anthropologists are rather cool to the Neanderthal. They cast him quite outside the sacred ranks of our ancestors. They say he was not Homo sapiens—merely Homo neanderthalensis. This means that he was a sort of dead end, a blind alley, up which one sort of ape-man ran, while another was taking a turn that ended in his being master of the atom but not of the atomic bomb. Other anthropologists do not agree. Like Keith, they take the Neanderthal into the sacred circle—at least at stud.