The races of the Paleolithic Period, so far as we can judge from their remains, appear successively on the scene with all their characters fully developed. The evolution of all these subspecies and races took place somewhere in Asia or eastern Europe. None of these races appear to be ancestral one to another, although the scanty remains of the Heidelberg Man would indicate that he may have given rise to the later Neanderthals. Other than this possible affinity, the various races of Paleolithic times are not related one to another.
III
THE NEOLITHIC AND BRONZE AGES
About 7,000 B.C. we enter an entirely new period in the history of man, the Neolithic or New Stone Age, when the flint implements were polished and not merely chipped. Early as is this date in European culture, we are not far from the beginnings of an elaborate civilization in parts of Asia and Egypt. The earliest organized governments, so far as our present knowledge goes, were Egypt and Sumer. Chinese civilization at the other end of Asia is later, but mystery still shrouds its origin and its connection, if any, with the Mesopotamian city-states. The solution probably lies in the central region of the Syr Darya and future excavations in those regions may uncover very early cultures. Balkh, the ancient Bactra, the mother of cities, is located where the trade routes between China, India and Mesopotamia converged and it is in this neighborhood that careful and thorough excavations will probably find their greatest reward.
However, we are not dealing with Asia but with Europe only and our knowledge is confined to the fact that the various cultural advances at the end of the Paleolithic and the beginning of the Neolithic correspond with the arrival of new races.
The transition from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic was formerly considered as revolutionary, an abrupt change of both race and culture, but a period more or less transitory, known as the Campignian, now appears to bridge over this gap. This is only what should be expected, since in human archæology as in geology the more detailed our knowledge becomes the more gradually we find one period or horizon merges into its successor.
For a long time after the opening of the Neolithic the old-fashioned chipped weapons and implements remain the predominant type and the polished flints so characteristic of the Neolithic appear at first only sporadically, then increase in number until finally they entirely replace the rougher designs of the preceding Old Stone Age.
So in their turn these Neolithic polished stone implements, which ultimately became both varied and effective as weapons and tools, continued in use long after metallurgy developed. In the Bronze Period metal armor and weapons were for ages of the greatest value. So they were necessarily in the possession of the military and ruling classes only, while the unfortunate serf or common soldier who followed his master to war did the best he could with leather shield and stone weapons. In the ring that clustered around Harold for the last stand on Senlac Hill many of the English thanes died with their Saxon king, armed solely with the stone battle-axes of their ancestors.
In Italy also there was a long period known to the Italian archæologists as the Eneolithic Period when good flint tools existed side by side with very poor copper and bronze implements; so that, while the Neolithic lasted in western Europe four or five thousand years, it is, at its commencement, without clear definition from the preceding Paleolithic and at its end it merges gradually into the succeeding ages of metals.
After the opening Campignian phase there followed a long period typical of the Neolithic, known as the Robenhausian or Age of the Swiss Lake Dwellers, which reached its height after 5000 B. C. The lake dwellings seem to have been the work chiefly of the round skull Alpine races and are found in numbers throughout the region of the Alps and their foothills and along the valley of the Danube.
These Robenhausian pile built villages were the earliest known form of fixed habitation in Europe and the culture found in association with them was a great advance over that of the preceding Paleolithic. This type of permanent habitation flourished through the entire Upper Neolithic and the succeeding Bronze Age. Pile villages end in Switzerland with the first appearance of iron but elsewhere, as on the upper Danube, they still existed in the days of Herodotus.