We cannot doubt, however, that articulate speech would be rapidly
evolved in the social life of the later Magdalenian period, and
the importance of this acquisition can hardly be exaggerated.
Imagine even a modern community without the device of articulate
language. A very large proportion of the community, who are now
maintained at a certain level by the thought of others,
communicated to them by speech, would sink below the civilised
standard, and the transmission and improvement of ideas would be
paralysed. It would not be paradoxical to regard the social life
and developing speech of Magdalenian man as the chief cause of
the rapid advance toward civilisation which will follow in the
next period.
And it is not without interest to notice that a fall in the
temperature of the earth is the immediate cause of this social
life. The building of homes of any kind seems to be unknown to
Magdalenian man. The artist would have left us some sketchy
representation of it if there had been anything in the nature of
a tent in his surroundings. The rock-shelter and the cave are the
homes which men seek from the advancing cold. As these are
relatively few in number, fixed in locality, and often of large
dimensions, the individualism of the earlier times is replaced by
collective life.
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