The Mental Life of Ancient Days
In addition to these, there are the primitive arts of man—the ceramic art, spinning, and weaving. In the former, especially, an appreciation of artistic form and decoration by ornament is developed. The ornament becomes a kind of symbolical written language, the eventual deciphering of which appears possible in view of the latest discoveries concerning the ornamental symbolism of the primitive races of the present day. Discoveries of dwellings prove an advanced knowledge of primitive architecture; entrenchments and tumuli acquaint us with the principles of their earthworks; and the giant chambers, built of colossal blocks of stone piled upon one another, prove that the builders of those times were not far behind the much-admired Egyptian builders in transporting and piling masses of stone. The burials, whose ceremonies are revealed by opened graves, afford a glimpse of the mental life of that period. From the skulls and skeletons that have been taken from the Neolithic graves, science has been able to reconstruct the physical frame of Neolithic Man, which has in no way to fear comparison with that of modern man. Of the ornaments of the Stone Age the most important and characteristic are perforated teeth of dogs, wolves, horses, oxen, bears, boars, and smaller beasts of prey. How much in favour such ornaments were is proved by the fact that even imitations or counterfeits of them were worn. Numerous articles of ornament, carved from bone and deer-horn, were universal: ornamental plates and spherical, basket-shaped, square, shuttle-like, or chisel-shaped beads were made of these materials and formed into chains.
THE ICE AGE IN THE PRESENT DAY: AN ESQUIMAU WATCHING A SEAL HOLE
LARGER IMAGE
In the Swiss lake-dwellings of the Stone Age have been found skilfully carved ear-drops, needles with eyes, neat little combs of boxwood, and hairpins, some with heads and others with pierced side protuberances. Remains of textile fabrics, even finely twilled tissue, and also leather, were yielded by the excavations of the lake-dwellings of that period, so that we have to imagine the inhabitants adorned with clothes of various kinds.
Man’s First and Oldest Animal Friend
What raises man of the later Stone Age so far above Palæolithic Man is the possession of domestic animals and the knowledge of agriculture. As domestic animals of the later Stone Age we have proof of the dog, cow, horse, sheep, goat, and pig. Among the animals that have attached themselves to man as domestic, the first and oldest is undoubtedly the dog. It is found distributed over the whole earth, being absent from only a few small islands. Among many races the dog was, and is still, the only domestic animal in the proper sense of the word. This applies to all Esquimau tribes, to the majority of the Indians of North and South America, and to the continent of Australia.
We have no certain proofs that Palæolithic Man possessed the dog as a domestic animal. In the Somme valley, at Taubach, and at the source of the Schussen, bones of the domestic dog are absent. And yet, among Drift fauna in caves remains of dogs have been repeatedly met with, which have been claimed to be the direct ancestors of the domestic dog. The dog’s attachment to man may have taken place at different times in different parts. Man and dog immigrate to South America with the foreign Northern fauna simultaneously—in a geological sense—during the Drift. In Australia, man and dog (dingo), as the most intimate animal beings, are opposed to an animal world that is otherwise anomalous and, to the Old World, quite antiquated; probably man and dog also came to Australia together. We know of fossil remains of the dingo from the Drift, but no reliable finds have yet proved the presence of man during that period.
The Dog in the Stone Age