Prehistoric Men 2

Prehistoric Men 2

SOME OTHER SCIENTISTS

 

There are many other scientists who help the archeologist and the

physical anthropologist find out about prehistoric men. The geologists

help us tell the age of the rocks or caves or gravel beds in which

human bones or man-made objects are found. There are other scientists

with names which all begin with “paleo” (the Greek word for “old”). The

_paleontologists_ study fossil animals. There are also, for example,

such scientists as _paleobotanists_ and _paleoclimatologists_, who

study ancient plants and climates. These scientists help us to know

the kinds of animals and plants that were living in prehistoric times

and so could be used for food by ancient man; what the weather was

like; and whether there were glaciers. Also, when I tell you that

prehistoric men did not appear until long after the great dinosaurs had

disappeared, I go on the say-so of the paleontologists. They know that

fossils of men and of dinosaurs are not found in the same geological

period. The dinosaur fossils come in early periods, the fossils of men

much later.

 

Since World War II even the atomic scientists have been helping the

archeologists. By testing the amount of radioactivity left in charcoal,

wood, or other vegetable matter obtained from archeological sites, they

have been able to date the sites. Shell has been used also, and even

the hair of Egyptian mummies. The dates of geological and climatic

events have also been discovered. Some of this work has been done from

drillings taken from the bottom of the sea.

 

This dating by radioactivity has considerably shortened the dates which

the archeologists used to give. If you find that some of the dates

I give here are more recent than the dates you see in other books

on prehistory, it is because I am using one of the new lower dating

systems.

 

[Illustration: RADIOCARBON CHART

 

The rate of disappearance of radioactivity as time passes.[1]]

 

[1] It is important that the limitations of the radioactive carbon

“dating” system be held in mind. As the statistics involved in

the system are used, there are two chances in three that the

“date” of the sample falls within the range given as plus or

minus an added number of years. For example, the “date” for the

Jarmo village (see chart), given as 6750 ± 200 B.C., really

means that there are only two chances in three that the real

date of the charcoal sampled fell between 6950 and 6550 B.C.

We have also begun to suspect that there are ways in which the

samples themselves may have become “contaminated,” either on

the early or on the late side. We now tend to be suspicious of

single radioactive carbon determinations, or of determinations

from one site alone. But as a fabric of consistent

determinations for several or more sites of one archeological

period, we gain confidence in the “dates.”

 

 

HOW THE SCIENTISTS FIND OUT

 

So far, this chapter has been mainly about the people who find out

about prehistoric men. We also need a word about _how_ they find out.

 

All our finds came by accident until about a hundred years ago. Men

digging wells, or digging in caves for fertilizer, often turned up

ancient swords or pots or stone arrowheads. People also found some odd

pieces of stone that didn’t look like natural forms, but they also

didn’t look like any known tool. As a result, the people who found them

gave them queer names; for example, “thunderbolts.” The people thought

the strange stones came to earth as bolts of lightning. We know now

that these strange stones were prehistoric stone tools.

 

Many important finds still come to us by accident. In 1935, a British

dentist, A. T. Marston, found the first of two fragments of a very

important fossil human skull, in a gravel pit at Swanscombe, on the

River Thames, England. He had to wait nine months, until the face of

the gravel pit had been dug eight yards farther back, before the second

fragment appeared. They fitted! Then, twenty years later, still another

piece appeared. In 1928 workmen who were blasting out rock for the

breakwater in the port of Haifa began to notice flint tools. Thus the

story of cave men on Mount Carmel, in Palestine, began to be known.

 

Planned archeological digging is only about a century old. Even before

this, however, a few men realized the significance of objects they dug

from the ground; one of these early archeologists was our own Thomas

Jefferson. The first real mound-digger was a German grocer’s clerk,

Heinrich Schliemann. Schliemann made a fortune as a merchant, first

in Europe and then in the California gold-rush of 1849. He became an

American citizen. Then he retired and had both money and time to test

an old idea of his. He believed that the heroes of ancient Troy and

Mycenae were once real Trojans and Greeks. He proved it by going to

Turkey and Greece and digging up the remains of both cities.

 

Schliemann had the great good fortune to find rich and spectacular

treasures, and he also had the common sense to keep notes and make

descriptions of what he found. He proved beyond doubt that many ancient

city mounds can be _stratified_. This means that there may be the

remains of many towns in a mound, one above another, like layers in a

cake.

 

You might like to have an idea of how mounds come to be in layers.

The original settlers may have chosen the spot because it had a good

spring and there were good fertile lands nearby, or perhaps because

it was close to some road or river or harbor. These settlers probably

built their town of stone and mud-brick. Finally, something would have

happened to the town--a flood, or a burning, or a raid by enemies--and

the walls of the houses would have fallen in or would have melted down

as mud in the rain. Nothing would have remained but the mud and debris

of a low mound of _one_ layer.

 

The second settlers would have wanted the spot for the same reasons

the first settlers did--good water, land, and roads. Also, the second

settlers would have found a nice low mound to build their houses on,

a protection from floods. But again, something would finally have

happened to the second town, and the walls of _its_ houses would have

come tumbling down. This makes the _second_ layer. And so on....

 

In Syria I once had the good fortune to dig on a large mound that had

no less than fifteen layers. Also, most of the layers were thick, and

there were signs of rebuilding and repairs within each layer. The mound

was more than a hundred feet high. In each layer, the building material

used had been a soft, unbaked mud-brick, and most of the debris

consisted of fallen or rain-melted mud from these mud-bricks.

 

This idea of _stratification_, like the cake layers, was already a

familiar one to the geologists by Schliemann’s time. They could show

that their lowest layer of rock was oldest or earliest, and that the

overlying layers became more recent as one moved upward. Schliemann’s

digging proved the same thing at Troy. His first (lowest and earliest)

city had at least nine layers above it; he thought that the second

layer contained the remains of Homer’s Troy. We now know that Homeric

Troy was layer VIIa from the bottom; also, we count eleven layers or

sub-layers in total.

 

Schliemann’s work marks the beginnings of modern archeology. Scholars

soon set out to dig on ancient sites, from Egypt to Central America.

 

 

ARCHEOLOGICAL INFORMATION

 

As time went on, the study of archeological materials--found either

by accident or by digging on purpose--began to show certain things.

Archeologists began to get ideas as to the kinds of objects that

belonged together. If you compared a mail-order catalogue of 1890 with

one of today, you would see a lot of differences. If you really studied

the two catalogues hard, you would also begin to see that certain

objects “go together.” Horseshoes and metal buggy tires and pieces of

harness would begin to fit into a picture with certain kinds of coal

stoves and furniture and china dishes and kerosene lamps. Our friend

the spark plug, and radios and electric refrigerators and light bulbs

would fit into a picture with different kinds of furniture and dishes

and tools. You won’t be old enough to remember the kind of hats that

women wore in 1890, but you’ve probably seen pictures of them, and you

know very well they couldn’t be worn with the fashions of today.

 

This is one of the ways that archeologists study their materials.

The various tools and weapons and jewelry, the pottery, the kinds

of houses, and even the ways of burying the dead tend to fit into

pictures. Some archeologists call all of the things that go together to

make such a picture an _assemblage_. The assemblage of the first layer

of Schliemann’s Troy was as different from that of the seventh layer as

our 1900 mail-order catalogue is from the one of today.

 

The archeologists who came after Schliemann began to notice other

things and to compare them with occurrences in modern times. The

idea that people will buy better mousetraps goes back into very

ancient times. Today, if we make good automobiles or radios, we can

sell some of them in Turkey or even in Timbuktu. This means that a

few present-day types of American automobiles and radios form part

of present-day “assemblages” in both Turkey and Timbuktu. The total

present-day “assemblage” of Turkey is quite different from that of

Timbuktu or that of America, but they have at least some automobiles

and some radios in common.

 

Now these automobiles and radios will eventually wear out. Let us

suppose we could go to some remote part of Turkey or to Timbuktu in a

dream. We don’t know what the date is, in our dream, but we see all

sorts of strange things and ways of living in both places. Nobody

tells us what the date is. But suddenly we see a 1936 Ford; so we

know that in our dream it has to be at least the year 1936, and only

as many years after that as we could reasonably expect a Ford to keep

in running order. The Ford would probably break down in twenty years’

time, so the Turkish or Timbuktu “assemblage” we’re seeing in our dream

has to date at about A.D. 1936-56.

 

Archeologists not only “date” their ancient materials in this way; they

also see over what distances and between which peoples trading was

done. It turns out that there was a good deal of trading in ancient

times, probably all on a barter and exchange basis.

 

 

EVERYTHING BEGINS TO FIT TOGETHER

 

Now we need to pull these ideas all together and see the complicated

structure the archeologists can build with their materials.

 

Even the earliest archeologists soon found that there was a very long

range of prehistoric time which would yield only very simple things.

For this very long early part of prehistory, there was little to be

found but the flint tools which wandering, hunting and gathering

people made, and the bones of the wild animals they ate. Toward the

end of prehistoric time there was a general settling down with the

coming of agriculture, and all sorts of new things began to be made.

Archeologists soon got a general notion of what ought to appear with

what. Thus, it would upset a French prehistorian digging at the bottom

of a very early cave if he found a fine bronze sword, just as much as

it would upset him if he found a beer bottle. The people of his very

early cave layer simply could not have made bronze swords, which came

later, just as do beer bottles. Some accidental disturbance of the layers of his cave must have happened.