While the dating is not yet sure, the material that we get from caves in Europe must go back to about 100,000 years ago; the time of the classic Neanderthal group followed soon afterwards. We don’t know why there is no earlier material in the caves; apparently they were not used before the last interglacial phase (the period just before the last great glaciation). We know that men of the classic Neanderthal group were living in caves from about 75,000 to 45,000 years ago. New radioactive carbon dates even suggest that some of the traces of culture we’ll describe in this chapter may have lasted to about 35,000 years ago. Probably some of the pre-neanderthaloid types of men had also lived in caves. But we have so far found their bones in caves only in Palestine and at Fontéchevade.
THE CAVE LAYERS
In parts of France, some peasants still live in caves. In prehistoric time, many generations of people lived in them. As a result, many caves have deep layers of debris. The first people moved in and lived on the rock floor. They threw on the floor whatever they didn’t want, and they tracked in mud; nobody bothered to clean house in those days. Their debris—junk and mud and garbage and what not—became packed into a layer. As time went on, and generations passed, the layer grew thicker. Then there might have been a break in the occupation of the cave for a while. Perhaps the game animals got scarce and the people moved away; or maybe the cave became flooded. Later on, other people moved in and began making a new layer of their own on top of the first layer. Perhaps this process of layering went on in the same cave for a hundred thousand years; you can see what happened. The drawing on this page shows a section through such a cave. The earliest layer is on the bottom, the latest one on top. They go in order from bottom to top, earliest to latest. This is the stratification we talked about ([p. 12]).
SECTION OF SHELTER ON LOWER TERRACE, LE MOUSTIER
While we may find a mix-up in caves, it’s not nearly as bad as the mixing up that was done by glaciers. The animal bones and shells, the fireplaces, the bones of men, and the tools the men made all belong together, if they come from one layer. That’s the reason why the cave of Peking man is so important. It is also the reason why the caves in Europe and the Near East are so important. We can get an idea of which things belong together and which lot came earliest and which latest.
In most cases, prehistoric men lived only in the mouths of caves. They didn’t like the dark inner chambers as places to live in. They preferred rock-shelters, at the bases of overhanging cliffs, if there was enough overhang to give shelter. When the weather was good, they no doubt lived in the open air as well. I’ll go on using the term “cave” since it’s more familiar, but remember that I really mean rock-shelter, as a place in which people actually lived.
The most important European cave sites are in Spain, France, and central Europe; there are also sites in England and Italy. A few caves are known in the Near East and Africa, and no doubt more sites will be found when the out-of-the-way parts of Europe, Africa, and Asia are studied.
AN “INDUSTRY” DEFINED
We have already seen that the earliest European cave materials are those from the cave of Fontéchevade. Movius feels certain that the lowest materials here date back well into the third interglacial stage, that which lay between the Riss (next to the last) and the Würm I (first stage of the last) alpine glaciations. This material consists of an industry of stone tools, apparently all made in the flake tradition. This is the first time we have used the word “industry.” It is useful to call all of the different tools found together in one layer and made of one kind of material an industry; that is, the tools must be found together as men left them. Tools taken from the glacial gravels (or from windswept desert surfaces or river gravels or any geological deposit) are not “together” in this sense. We might say the latter have only “geological,” not “archeological” context. Archeological context means finding things just as men left them. We can tell what tools go together in an “industrial” sense only if we have archeological context.