AN OLDER INTERPRETATION OF THE WESTERN TRADITIONS
In the last chapter, I told you that many of the older archeologists and human paleontologists used to think that modern man was very old. The supposed ages of Piltdown and Galley Hill were given as evidence of the great age of anatomically modern man, and some interpretations of the Swanscombe and Fontéchevade fossils were taken to support this view. The conclusion was that there were two parallel lines or “phyla” of men already present well back in the Pleistocene. The first of these, the more primitive or “paleoanthropic” line, was said to include Heidelberg, the proto-neanderthaloids and classic Neanderthal. The more anatomically modern or “neanthropic” line was thought to consist of Piltdown and the others mentioned above. The Neanderthaler or paleoanthropic line was thought to have become extinct after the first phase of the last great glaciation. Of course, the modern or neanthropic line was believed to have persisted into the present, as the basis for the world’s population today. But with Piltdown liquidated, Galley Hill known to be very late, and Swanscombe and Fontéchevade otherwise interpreted, there is little left of the so-called parallel phyla theory.
While the theory was in vogue, however, and as long as the European archeological evidence was looked at in one short-sighted way, the archeological materials seemed to fit the parallel phyla theory. It was simply necessary to believe that the flake tools were made only by the paleoanthropic Neanderthaler line, and that the more handsome core-biface tools were the product of the neanthropic modern-man line.
Remember that almost all of the early prehistoric European tools came only from the redeposited gravel beds. This means that the tools were not normally found in the remains of camp sites or work shops where they had actually been dropped by the men who made and used them. The tools came, rather, from the secondary hodge-podge of the glacial gravels. I tried to give you a picture of the bulldozing action of glaciers ([p. 40]) and of the erosion and weathering that were side-effects of a glacially conditioned climate on the earth’s surface. As we said above, if one simply plucks tools out of the redeposited gravels, his natural tendency is to “type” the tools by groups, and to think that the groups stand for something on their own.
In 1906, M. Victor Commont actually made a rare find of what seems to have been a kind of workshop site, on a terrace above the Somme river in France. Here, Commont realized, flake tools appeared clearly in direct association with core-biface tools. Few prehistorians paid attention to Commont or his site, however. It was easier to believe that flake tools represented a distinct “culture” and that this “culture” was that of the Neanderthaler or paleoanthropic line, and that the core-bifaces stood for another “culture” which was that of the supposed early modern or neanthropic line. Of course, I am obviously skipping many details here. Some later sites with Neanderthal fossils do seem to have only flake tools, but other such sites have both types of tools. The flake tools which appeared with the core-bifaces in the Swanscombe gravels were never made much of, although it was embarrassing for the parallel phyla people that Fontéchevade ran heavily to flake tools. All in all, the parallel phyla theory flourished because it seemed so neat and easy to understand.
TRADITIONS ARE TOOL-MAKING HABITS, NOT CULTURES
In case you think I simply enjoy beating a dead horse, look in any standard book on prehistory written twenty (or even ten) years ago, or in most encyclopedias. You’ll find that each of the individual tool types, of the West, at least, was supposed to represent a “culture.” The “cultures” were believed to correspond to parallel lines of human evolution.
In 1937, Mr. Harper Kelley strongly re-emphasized the importance of Commont’s workshop site and the presence of flake tools with core-bifaces. Next followed Dr. Movius’ clear delineation of the chopper-chopping tool tradition of the Far East. This spoiled the nice symmetry of the flake-tool = paleoanthropic, core-biface = neanthropic equations. Then came increasing understanding of the importance of the pebble tools in Africa, and the location of several more workshop sites there, especially at Olorgesailie in Kenya. Finally came the liquidation of Piltdown and the deflation of Galley Hill’s date. So it is at last possible to picture an individual prehistoric man making a flake tool to do one job and a core-biface tool to do another. Commont showed us this picture in 1906, but few believed him.
DISTRIBUTION OF TOOL-PREPARATION TRADITIONS