ABSTRACT
WE are now in a position to begin our general enquiry, but first let us return for a moment to the question of models of the past. In the old technological model, going back to Thomsen, and in this country Lubbock, there was a Stone Age, defined by the use of flint and stone for edge-tools. These had a good survival-value, so that entire cultures were represented almost wholly by stone artifacts. Of the other elements of material culture, a certain amount of bone and antler and ivory objects could also be put into this Stone Age, and a very few of such perishable substances as wood or fibre. Geological considerations showed, from an early stage in the enquiry, that this Stone Age was oflong duration, and lay partly in periods of such antiquity that man and his implements were contemporary with extinct animals, themselves indicative of very different climatic conditions, and in a geography antecedent to that of today. Lubbock therefore took a bold step, and split the Stone Age into two unequal parts-an Old Stone Age or Palaeolithic period, and a New Stone Age, or Neolithic period. The criteria for differentiating the latter were primarily technological: the technique of grinding or polishing the surfaces of stone or flint axe-blades, and the making of pottery. In addition, there were geological overtones, for the Neolithic was seen to lie in the Holocene or Recent period of geological time, the Palaeolithic in the Pleistocene.1
