Fig. 69.—Sketch of a painting by Paleolithic man found in a cave in west-central France. Various animals, including the extinct mammoth elephant, are represented. (Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History.)
The Neolithic, or “recent stone” age was a gradual development from the late Paleolithic, and man was then more highly developed and more similar in structure to modern man. His stone implements were more perfectly made, and often more or less polished and ground at the edges. “The remains of Neolithic man are found, much as are those of the North American Indians, upon or near the surface, in burial mounds, in shell heaps (the refuse heaps of their settlements), in peat bogs, caves, recent flood-plain deposits, and in beds of lakes near shore where they sometimes built their dwellings upon piles.... Neolithic man in Europe had learned to make pottery, to spin and weave linen, to hew timber, and build boats, and to grow wheat and barley. The dog, horse, ox, sheep, goat, and hog had been domesticated.” (Norton.)
“Man is linked to the past through the system of life, of which he is the last, the completing creation. But, unlike other species of that closing system of the past, he, through his spiritual nature, is more intimately connected with the opening future.” (J. D. Dana.)
MINERALOGY
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