In east and south Africa lived people whose industries show a development of the Levalloisian technique. Such industries are called Stillbay. Another industry, developed on the basis of the Acheulean technique, is called Fauresmith. From the northwest comes an industry with tanged points and flake-blades; this is called the Aterian. The tropical rain forest region contained people whose stone tools apparently show adjustment to this peculiar environment; the so-called Sangoan industry includes stone picks, adzes, core-bifaces of specialized Acheulean type, and bifacial points which were probably spearheads.
In western Asia, even as far as the east coast of India, the tools of the Eurafrican core-biface and flake tool traditions continued to be used. But in the Far East, as we noted in the last chapter, men had developed characteristic stone chopper and chopping tools. This tool preparation tradition—basically a pebble tool tradition—lasted to the very end of the Ice Age.
When more intact open air sites such as that of an earlier time at Olorgesailie, and more stratified cave sites are found and excavated in Asia and Africa, we shall be able to get a more complete picture. So far, our picture of the general cultural level of the Old World at about 100,000 years ago—and soon afterwards—is best from Europe, but it is still far from complete there, too.
CULTURE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE LAST GREAT GLACIAL PERIOD
The few things we have found must indicate only a very small part of the total activities of the people who lived at the time. All of the things they made of wood and bark, of skins, of anything soft, are gone. The fact that burials were made, at least in Europe and Palestine, is pretty clear proof that the people had some notion of a life after death. But what this notion really was, or what gods (if any) men believed in, we cannot know. Dr. Movius has also reminded me of the so-called bear cults—cases in which caves have been found which contain the skulls of bears in apparently purposeful arrangement. This might suggest some notion of hoarding up the spirits or the strength of bears killed in the hunt. Probably the people lived in small groups, as hunting and food-gathering seldom provide enough food for large groups of people. These groups probably had some kind of leader or “chief.” Very likely the rude beginnings of rules for community life and politics, and even law, were being made. But what these were, we do not know. We can only guess about such things, as we can only guess about many others; for example, how the idea of a family must have been growing, and how there may have been witch doctors who made beginnings in medicine or in art, in the materials they gathered for their trade.
The stone tools help us most. They have lasted, and we can find them. As they come to us, from this cave or that, and from this layer or that, the tool industries show a variety of combinations of the different basic habits or traditions of tool preparation. This seems only natural, as the groups of people must have been very small. The mixtures and blendings of the habits used in making stone tools must mean that there were also mixtures and blends in many of the other ideas and beliefs of these small groups. And what this probably means is that there was no one culture of the time. It is certainly unlikely that there were simply three cultures, “Acheulean,” “Levalloisian,” and “Mousterian,” as has been thought in the past. Rather there must have been a great variety of loosely related cultures at about the same stage of advancement. We could say, too, that here we really begin to see, for the first time, that remarkable ability of men to adapt themselves to a variety of conditions. We shall see this adaptive ability even more clearly as time goes on and the record becomes more complete.
Over how great an area did these loosely related cultures reach in the time 75,000 to 45,000 or even as late as 35,000 years ago? We have described stone tools made in one or another of the flake and core-biface habits, for an enormous area. It covers all of Europe, all of Africa, the Near East, and parts of India. It is perfectly possible that the flake and core-biface habits lasted on after 35,000 years ago, in some places outside of Europe. In northern Africa, for example, we are certain that they did (see chart, [p. 72]).
On the other hand, in the Far East (China, Burma, Java) and in northern India, the tools of the old chopper-tool tradition were still being made. Out there, we must assume, there was a different set of loosely related cultures. At least, there was a different set of loosely related habits for the making of tools. But the men who made them must have looked much like the men of the West. Their tools were different, but just as useful.
As to what the men of the West looked like, I’ve already hinted at all we know so far ([pp. 29] ff.). The Neanderthalers were present at the time. Some more modern-like men must have been about, too, since fossils of them have turned up at Mount Carmel in Palestine, and at Teshik Tash, in Trans-caspian Russia. It is still too soon to know whether certain combinations of tools within industries were made only by certain physical types of men. But since tools of both the core-biface and the flake traditions, and their blends, turn up from South Africa to England to India, it is most unlikely that only one type of man used only one particular habit in the preparation of tools. What seems perfectly clear is that men in Africa and men in India were making just as good tools as the men who lived in western Europe.