telligence. The Neanderthal man inherited a stone culture which
was already of great antiquity. At least one, if not two or three,
prolonged phases of the Old Stone Age were already over when he
appeared. On the most modest estimate men had by that time been chipping
flints for several hundred thousand years, and it is no argument of
general intelligence that some skill in the one industry of the age had
been developed. The true measure of Neanderthal man's capacity is that,
a million years or so after passing the anthropoid-age level, he chipped
his stones more finely and gave them a better edge and contour. There
is no evidence that he as yet hefted them. It is flattering to him to
compare him with the Australian aboriginal. The native art, the shields
and spears and boomerangs, and the elaborate tribal and matrimonial
arrangements of the Australian black are not known to have had any
counterpart in his life.

It would therefore seem that the precursors of man made singularly
little, if any, progress during the vast span of time between the
Miocene and the Ice-Age, and that then something occurred which
quickened the face of human evolution. From the Neanderthal level man
will advance to the height of modern civilisation in about one-tenth
the time that it took him to advance from the level of the higher ape to
that of the lowest savage. Something has broken into the long lethargy
of his primitive career, and set him upon a progressive path. Let us see
if a careful review of the stages of his culture confirms the
natural supposition that this "something" was the fall in the earth's
temperature, and how it may have affected him.

CHAPTER XX. THE DAWN OF CIVILISATION

The story of man before the discovery of metal and the attainment of
civilisation is notoriously divided into a Palaeolithic (Old Stone) Age,
and a Neolithic (New Stone) Age. Each of these ages is now subdivided
into stages, which we will review in succession. But it is important
to conceive the whole story of man in more correct proportion than this
familiar division suggests. The historical or civilised period is now
computed at about ten thousand years. The Neolithic Age, which preceded
civilisation, is usually believed to be about four or five times as
long, though estimates of its duration vary from about twenty to a
hundred thousand years. The Palaeolithic Age in turn is regarded as at
least three or four times as long as the Neolithic; estimat