THE NEW ERA
Perhaps it comes in part from the way I read the evidence and perhaps in part it is only intuition, but I feel that the materials of this chapter suggest a new era in the ways of life. Before about 40,000 years ago, people simply “gathered” their food, wandering over large areas to scavenge or to hunt in a simple sort of way. But here we have seen them “settling-in” more, perhaps restricting themselves in their wanderings and adapting themselves to a given locality in more intensive ways. This intensification might be suggested by the word “collecting.” The ways of life we described in the earlier chapters were “food-gathering” ways, but now an era of “food-collecting” has begun. We shall see further intensifications of it in the next chapter.
End and PRELUDE
Up to the end of the last glaciation, we prehistorians have a relatively comfortable time schedule. The farther back we go the less exact we can be about time and details. Elbow-room of five, ten, even fifty or more thousands of years becomes available for us to maneuver in as we work backward in time. But now our story has come forward to the point where more exact methods of dating are at hand. The radioactive carbon method reaches back into the span of the last glaciation. There are other methods, developed by the geologists and paleobotanists, which supplement and extend the usefulness of the radioactive carbon dates. And, happily, as our means of being more exact increases, our story grows more exciting. There are also more details of culture for us to deal with, which add to the interest.
CHANGES AT THE END OF THE ICE AGE
The last great glaciation of the Ice Age was a two-part affair, with a sub-phase at the end of the second part. In Europe the last sub-phase of this glaciation commenced somewhere around 15,000 years ago. Then the glaciers began to melt back, for the last time. Remember that Professor Antevs ([p. 19]) isn’t sure the Ice Age is over yet! This melting sometimes went by fits and starts, and the weather wasn’t always changing for the better; but there was at least one time when European weather was even better than it is now.