562

After Cartailhac and Breuil.

FIGURE 41. Diagram of Frescoes on the Ceiling of the Cavern of Altamira. and slow were at a disadvantage with the clever and the quick. Docility of disposition, a readiness to take up new methods of food getting and better appreciation of the value of persistent activity along peaceful rather than warlike lines must have counted for much. The wholesale weeding out of the less vigorous physically, of the sluggish intellectually, and in general of those least adapted to the conditions which made for progress, meant the survival and perpetuation of better racial stock. But the process of selection operated to favor certain lasting cultural elements as well as to exterminate tendencies in unprogressive directions. The total consequence was that from this seething riot of new experiences and the constant testing of diverse physical,/intellectual, and cultural elements, there emerged a new and higher culture, the neolithic.

The neolithic men had learned the lesson of patience; they had domesticated the horse, ox, pig, sheep, goat and dog. The men of the rough stone ages had failed to

make this very important step in progress. Fire was generally known and could be artificially kindled. The food which had been mainly uncooked vegetable and the raw flesh of fish and animal in the paleolithic culture, was in this new period largely cooked and obtained by

stock breeding and tillage as well as by fishing and the chase. This was a most important gain, for it meant a larger and more certain food supply. And the food supply is always a serious problem among primitive peoples. The men of the polished stone age made implements of diverse type, not rough and irregular like their predecessors, but ground smooth and shapely." They were also skilled in spinning and weaving and had considerable success in making pottery.45 All these arts were foreign to the men of the rough stone ages. Neolithic men left imposing monuments in the form of gigantic upright stones reminiscent of early religious rites 44 See figure 42. 45 See figure 43.