framework of time based on the changing implements of primitive man. Hence, the palaeolithic (Old Stone Age) refers to the vast period before the end of the ice ages when Man worked with chipped stone tools. The mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) refers to the much more recent period following the last of the ice, c.8000–3000 BC. The two millennia which preceded the Christian or Common Era, which forms our own, arbitrary scheme of chronology [ANNO DOMINI] , were taken up successively by the neolithic (New Stone Age), the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age. Each of these technological ‘Ages’ can be subdivided into early, middle, and late phases. It is essential to remember, however, that the Three-Age System is not based on any absolute scale of time. At any given moment, one place might have lingered in the neolithic whilst others had reached the Iron Age. In any given region, there could be peoples living at different stages of development, or using different forms of technology simultaneously.
The Old Stone Age reached back for a million years. It overlapped with the penultimate era of quaternary geological time, the Pleistocene, and with the last great glaciations—known respectively as Mindel, Riss, and Wiirm. Apart from Neanderthal and Le Moustier, invaluable finds have been made at Cromagnon (1868), Grimaldi (1874), Combe-Capelle (1909), Chancelade (1888), and at all points between Abbeville and Ojców, each associated with particular humanoid types, periods, or cultures. At Aurignac, Solutré, and Abri La Madeleine, sculptures of the human form first appeared in the shape of figurines such as the ‘Venus of Willendorf’ or the ‘Venus of Laussel’. With the Magdalenian period, at the end of the palaeolithic age when bone tools were in fashion, under the shadow of the last ice cap, the high point of cave art was reached. Magnificentsubterranean galleries have survived at Altamira in Spain (1879) and at Lascaux in Dordogne (1940), leading some commentators to talk of a ‘Franco-Cantabrian School’. In a cave near Mentón on the Riviera, a hoard of Cassis rufa shells from the Indian Ocean was found. The shells were thought to possess life-giving powers, and their presence would seem to conñrm both a sophisticated religious system and a far-flung trading network. 14 [LAUSSEL]
GAT-HUNTER
T HE origins of organized political communities, or ‘states’, have rarely been sought before the neolithic period. Some theorists, including Marxists, have looked to the tribes and tribal chiefdoms of the Bronze and Iron Ages. Others have looked to the neolithic revolution in agriculture and to the associated growth of fixed settlement. According to V. Gordon Childe, for instance, the preconditions for a state organized on residence, not kinship, required territorial authority, surplus capital, symbolic monuments, long-distance trade, labour specialization, stratified society, scientific knowledge, and the art of writing. Such preconditions were first met in Egypt and Mesopotamia, and in Europe, in the city-states of ancient Greece (see Chapter II).
Analysis of the complex society of hunter-gatherers, however, projects the topic much further back in time. Hunter-gatherers or gatherer-hunters, it seems, were not saved by the advent of agriculture from the immemorial threat of extinction. On the contrary, they enjoyed many millennia of ‘unending leisure and affluence’. They were not unfamiliar with agriculture when it arose, but rejected it, except as a marginal or supplementary activity.
What is more, in the later stages of prehistory they developed social structures which permitted differentiated specialization. In addition to the far-roaming hunter-warriors and the home-based gatherers, some groups could specialize in the new labour-intensive processes of fishing, seafood collection, harvesting wild grass and nuts, or bird-trapping. Others were free to specialize as organizers or as negotiators in the formation of
The Old Stone Age reached back for a million years. It overlapped with the penultimate era of quaternary geological time, the Pleistocene, and with the last great glaciations—known respectively as Mindel, Riss, and Wiirm. Apart from Neanderthal and Le Moustier, invaluable finds have been made at Cromagnon (1868), Grimaldi (1874), Combe-Capelle (1909), Chancelade (1888), and at all points between Abbeville and Ojców, each associated with particular humanoid types, periods, or cultures. At Aurignac, Solutré, and Abri La Madeleine, sculptures of the human form first appeared in the shape of figurines such as the ‘Venus of Willendorf’ or the ‘Venus of Laussel’. With the Magdalenian period, at the end of the palaeolithic age when bone tools were in fashion, under the shadow of the last ice cap, the high point of cave art was reached. Magnificentsubterranean galleries have survived at Altamira in Spain (1879) and at Lascaux in Dordogne (1940), leading some commentators to talk of a ‘Franco-Cantabrian School’. In a cave near Mentón on the Riviera, a hoard of Cassis rufa shells from the Indian Ocean was found. The shells were thought to possess life-giving powers, and their presence would seem to conñrm both a sophisticated religious system and a far-flung trading network. 14 [LAUSSEL]
GAT-HUNTER
T HE origins of organized political communities, or ‘states’, have rarely been sought before the neolithic period. Some theorists, including Marxists, have looked to the tribes and tribal chiefdoms of the Bronze and Iron Ages. Others have looked to the neolithic revolution in agriculture and to the associated growth of fixed settlement. According to V. Gordon Childe, for instance, the preconditions for a state organized on residence, not kinship, required territorial authority, surplus capital, symbolic monuments, long-distance trade, labour specialization, stratified society, scientific knowledge, and the art of writing. Such preconditions were first met in Egypt and Mesopotamia, and in Europe, in the city-states of ancient Greece (see Chapter II).
Analysis of the complex society of hunter-gatherers, however, projects the topic much further back in time. Hunter-gatherers or gatherer-hunters, it seems, were not saved by the advent of agriculture from the immemorial threat of extinction. On the contrary, they enjoyed many millennia of ‘unending leisure and affluence’. They were not unfamiliar with agriculture when it arose, but rejected it, except as a marginal or supplementary activity.
What is more, in the later stages of prehistory they developed social structures which permitted differentiated specialization. In addition to the far-roaming hunter-warriors and the home-based gatherers, some groups could specialize in the new labour-intensive processes of fishing, seafood collection, harvesting wild grass and nuts, or bird-trapping. Others were free to specialize as organizers or as negotiators in the formation of
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