EARLY MODERNS
From some time during the first inter-stadial of the last great glaciation (say some time after about 40,000 years ago), we have more accurate dates for the European-Mediterranean area and less accurate ones for the rest of the Old World. This is probably because the effects of the last glaciation have been studied in the European-Mediterranean area more than they have been elsewhere.
A NEW TRADITION APPEARS
Something new was probably beginning to happen in the European-Mediterranean area about 40,000 years ago, though all the rest of the Old World seems to have been going on as it had been. I can’t be sure of this because the information we are using as a basis for dates is very inaccurate for the areas outside of Europe and the Mediterranean.
We can at least make a guess. In Egypt and north Africa, men were still using the old methods of making stone tools. This was especially true of flake tools of the Levalloisian type, save that they were growing smaller and smaller as time went on. But at the same time, a new tradition was becoming popular in westernmost Asia and in Europe. This was the blade-tool tradition.
BLADE TOOLS
A stone blade is really just a long parallel-sided flake, as the drawing shows. It has sharp cutting edges, and makes a very useful knife. The real trick is to be able to make one. It is almost impossible to make a blade out of any stone but flint or a natural volcanic glass called obsidian. And even if you have flint or obsidian, you first have to work up a special cone-shaped “blade-core,” from which to whack off blades.