ABSTRACT
The early ape-like creatures believed to be the ancestors of true man have been found mainly in Africa, dating back more than three or four million years. Successive waves of these primitive races existed in the interglacial periods between various ice ages. During one of the interglacial stages, there developed a new race of hominids from the earlier genus called Australopiithecines. This has been designated as the genus Homo, with a larger brain capacity. Red ochre is an oxide of iron called “haematite” by the Greeks, a word meaning bloodstone. Haematite was therefore mined in substantial quantities for these funerary and other purposes. Some time after the last Ice Age, about 35,000 years ago, the Cro-Magnons spread westward into Europe, perhaps from Asia, to seek better hunting grounds. The Old Stone Age came to a close about 10,000 bc, after covering nearly half a million years of man’s early existence.
