Sociologists still dispute whether the clan
arose by the cohesion of families or the family arose within the
clan. Such evidence as is afforded by prehistoric remains is
entirely in favour of the opinion of Professor Westermarck, that
the family preceded the larger group. Families of common descent
would now cling together and occupy a common cavern, and, when
the men gathered at night with the women for the roasting and
eating of the horse or deer they had hunter!, and the work of the
artist and the woman was considered, the uncouth muttering and
gesticulating was slowly forged into the great instrument of
articulate speech. The first condition of more rapid progress was
instinctively gained.
Our story of life has so often turned on this periodical lowering
of the climate of the earth that it is interesting to find this
last and most important advance so closely associated with it
that we are forced once more to regard it as the effective cause.
The same may be said of another fundamental advance of the men of
the later Palaeolithic age, the discovery of the art of making
fire. It coincides with the oncoming of the cold, either in the
Mousterian or the Magdalenian.
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