As usual, we must leave open the
question of chronology, and be content with a modest provisional
estimate of 40,000 or 50,000 years.
We dimly perceive the gradual advance of human culture in this
important period. During the Old Stone Age man had made more
progress than he had made in the preceding million years; during
the New Stone Age--at least one-fourth as long as the Old--he
made even greater progress; and, we may add, in the historical
period, which is one-fourth the length of the Neolithic Age, he
will make greater progress still. The pace of advance naturally
increases as intelligence grows, but that is not the whole
explanation. The spread of the race, the gathering of its members
into tribes, and the increasing enterprise of men in hunting and
migration, lead to incessant contacts of different cultures and a
progressive stimulation.
At first Neolithic man is content with finer weapons. His stone
axe is so finely shaped and polished that it sometimes looks like
forged or moulded metal. He also drills a clean hole through
it--possibly by means of a stick working in wet sand--and gives
it a long wooden handle. He digs in the earth for finer flints,
and in some of his ancient shafts (Grimes, Graves and Cissbury)
we find picks of reindeer horn and hollowed blocks of chalk in
which he probably burned fat for illumination underground.
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