Man in the Old Stone Age
Evidence is, however, that it is not always possible to draw any clear line between the Old and New Stone Ages. In one respect the former was towards its close even in advance of the latter, and quite a “Paleolithic School of Art” was developed during a long period of steady progress in the sheltered Vézère valley, of South France. Here were produced some of those remarkable stone, horn, and even ivory scrapers, gravers, harpoons, ornaments and statuettes with carvings on the round, and skilful etchings of seals, fishes, reindeer, harnessed horses, mammoths, snakes, and man himself, which also occur in other districts.
In Tunisia many implements lie under a thick bed of Pleistocene limestone deposited by a river which has since disappeared. The now absolutely lifeless Libyan plateau is strewn with innumerable worked flints, showing that early man inhabited this formerly fertile region before it was reduced by the slowly changing climate to a waste of sands. The same story of man’s great age is told by discoveries in Burma, India, North and especially South America, and now also in Great Britain.