shaped flints; he had no domestic animals save possibly the dog and the reindeer; he was practically ignorant of the art of making pottery; he had no belief in a future life, at least we have no evidence that he buried his dead after the manner of those folk
Fig. 2.—Engraving of a Reindeer[1] (Old Stone Age)
who have come to hold such a belief (sec. 6).
The length of the Old Stone Age no one knows; we do not attempt to reckon its duration by centuries or millenniums even, but only by geologic epochs. But we do know—and this is something of vastly greater moment than a knowledge of the duration of the age—that the long slow epochs did not pass away without some progress having been made by primeval man, which assures us that though so lowly a creature he was a creature endowed with capacity for growth and improvement.
Before the end of the age man had learned the use of fire, as we know from the traces of fire found in the caves which were his abode, and had invented the bow and arrow, as is evidenced by arrowheads of flint and of bone which have been discovered. This important invention gave man what was to be one of his
Fig. 3.—Engraving of a Mammoth on the Fragment of a Tusk[1] (Old Stone Age)
chief weapons in the chase and in war down to and even after the invention of firearms late in the historic age.
But most prophetic of the great future before this savage or semi-savage cave man is the sense of form and beauty which he possessed; for, strange as it may seem, the man of this epoch was in his way an artist.
