Prehistoric Men 1

Prehistoric Men 1

Prehistoric Men

Author: Robert J. (Robert John) Braidwood

Preface

Like the writing of most professional archeologists, mine has been

confined to so-called learned papers. Good, bad, or indifferent, these

papers were in a jargon that only my colleagues and a few advanced

students could understand. Hence, when I was asked to do this little

book, I soon found it extremely difficult to say what I meant in simple

fashion. The style is new to me, but I hope the reader will not find it

forced or pedantic; at least I have done my very best to tell the story

simply and clearly.

 

Many friends have aided in the preparation of the book. The whimsical

charm of Miss Susan Richert’s illustrations add enormously to the

spirit I wanted. She gave freely of her own time on the drawings and

in planning the book with me. My colleagues at the University of

Chicago, especially Professor Wilton M. Krogman (now of the University

of Pennsylvania), and also Mrs. Linda Braidwood, Associate of the

Oriental Institute, and Professors Fay-Cooper Cole and Sol Tax, of

the Department of Anthropology, gave me counsel in matters bearing on

their special fields, and the Department of Anthropology bore some of

the expense of the illustrations. From Mrs. Irma Hunter and Mr. Arnold

Maremont, who are not archeologists at all and have only an intelligent

layman’s notion of archeology, I had sound advice on how best to tell

the story. I am deeply indebted to all these friends.

 

While I was preparing the second edition, I had the great fortune

to be able to rework the third chapter with Professor Sherwood L.

Washburn, now of the Department of Anthropology of the University of

California, and the fourth, fifth, and sixth chapters with Professor

Hallum L. Movius, Jr., of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University. The

book has gained greatly in accuracy thereby. In matters of dating,

Professor Movius and the indications of Professor W. F. Libby’s Carbon

14 chronology project have both encouraged me to choose the lowest

dates now current for the events of the Pleistocene Ice Age. There is

still no certain way of fixing a direct chronology for most of the

Pleistocene, but Professor Libby’s method appears very promising for

its end range and for proto-historic dates. In any case, this book

names “periods,” and new dates may be written in against mine, if new

and better dating systems appear.

 

I wish to thank Dr. Clifford C. Gregg, Director of Chicago Natural

History Museum, for the opportunity to publish this book. My old

friend, Dr. Paul S. Martin, Chief Curator in the Department of

Anthropology, asked me to undertake the job and inspired me to complete

it. I am also indebted to Miss Lillian A. Ross, Associate Editor of

Scientific Publications, and to Mr. George I. Quimby, Curator of

Exhibits in Anthropology, for all the time they have given me in

getting the manuscript into proper shape.

 

ROBERT J. BRAIDWOOD

_June 15, 1950_

 

 

 

 

Preface to the Third Edition

 

 

In preparing the enlarged third edition, many of the above mentioned

friends have again helped me. I have picked the brains of Professor F.

Clark Howell of the Department of Anthropology of the University of

Chicago in reworking the earlier chapters, and he was very patient in

the matter, which I sincerely appreciate.

 

All of Mrs. Susan Richert Allen’s original drawings appear, but a few

necessary corrections have been made in some of the charts and some new

drawings have been added by Mr. John Pfiffner, Staff Artist, Chicago

Natural History Museum.

 

ROBERT J. BRAIDWOOD

_March 1, 1959_

 

 

 

 

Contents

 

 

PAGE

How We Learn about Prehistoric Men 7

 

The Changing World in Which Prehistoric Men Lived 17

 

Prehistoric Men Themselves 22

 

Cultural Beginnings 38

 

More Evidence of Culture 56

 

Early Moderns 70

 

End and Prelude 92

 

The First Revolution 121

 

The Conquest of Civilization 144

 

End of Prehistory 162

 

Summary 176

 

List of Books 180

 

Index 184

 

 

 

 

HOW WE LEARN about Prehistoric Men

 

[Illustration]

 

 

Prehistory means the time before written history began. Actually, more

than 99 per cent of man’s story is prehistory. Man is at least half a

million years old, but he did not begin to write history (or to write

anything) until about 5,000 years ago.

 

The men who lived in prehistoric times left us no history books, but

they did unintentionally leave a record of their presence and their way

of life. This record is studied and interpreted by different kinds of

scientists.

 

 

SCIENTISTS WHO FIND OUT ABOUT PREHISTORIC MEN

 

The scientists who study the bones and teeth and any other parts

they find of the bodies of prehistoric men, are called _physical

anthropologists_. Physical anthropologists are trained, much like

doctors, to know all about the human body. They study living people,

too; they know more about the biological facts of human “races” than

anybody else. If the police find a badly decayed body in a trunk,

they ask a physical anthropologist to tell them what the person

originally looked like. The physical anthropologists who specialize in

prehistoric men work with fossils, so they are sometimes called _human

paleontologists_.

 

 

ARCHEOLOGISTS

 

There is a kind of scientist who studies the things that prehistoric

men made and did. Such a scientist is called an _archeologist_. It is

the archeologist’s business to look for the stone and metal tools, the

pottery, the graves, and the caves or huts of the men who lived before

history began.

 

But there is more to archeology than just looking for things. In

Professor V. Gordon Childe’s words, archeology “furnishes a sort of

history of human activity, provided always that the actions have

produced concrete results and left recognizable material traces.” You

will see that there are at least three points in what Childe says:

 

1. The archeologists have to find the traces of things left behind by

ancient man, and

 

2. Only a few objects may be found, for most of these were probably

too soft or too breakable to last through the years. However,

 

3. The archeologist must use whatever he can find to tell a story--to

make a “sort of history”--from the objects and living-places and

graves that have escaped destruction.

 

What I mean is this: Let us say you are walking through a dump yard,

and you find a rusty old spark plug. If you want to think about what

the spark plug means, you quickly remember that it is a part of an

automobile motor. This tells you something about the man who threw

the spark plug on the dump. He either had an automobile, or he knew

or lived near someone who did. He can’t have lived so very long ago,

you’ll remember, because spark plugs and automobiles are only about

sixty years old.

 

When you think about the old spark plug in this way you have

just been making the beginnings of what we call an archeological

_interpretation_; you have been making the spark plug tell a story.

It is the same way with the man-made things we archeologists find

and put in museums. Usually, only a few of these objects are pretty

to look at; but each of them has some sort of story to tell. Making

the interpretation of his finds is the most important part of the

archeologist’s job. It is the way he gets at the “sort of history of

human activity” which is expected of archeology.