The Iceman This is an artist's rendition of what the Iceman might have looked like. Notice his tools, remarkable evidence of the technology of his day.
(© Smetek/STERN/Picture Press)
The discovery of the well-preserved remains of a man at the edge of a melting glacier in the European Alps in 1991 provided unusually detailed information about everyday technologies of the fourth millennium b. c.e. Not just the body of this “Iceman" was well preserved. His clothing, his tools, and even the food in his stomach survived in remarkably good condition.
Dressed from head to toe for the cold weather of the mountains, the fifty-year-old man was wearing a fur hat fastened under the chin with a strap, a tailored vest of different colored deerskins, leather leggings and loincloth, and a padded cloak made of grasses. On his feet were calfskin shoes also padded with grass for warmth and comfort. The articles of clothing had been sewn together with fiber and leather cords. He carried a birch-bark drinking cup.
Most of his tools were those of the Late Stone Age. In a sort of leather fanny pack he carried small flint tools for cutting, scraping, and punching holes, as well as some tinder for making a fire. He also carried a leather quiver with flint-tipped arrows, but his 6-foot (1.8-meter) bow was unfinished, lacking a bowstring. In addition, he had a flint knife and a tool for sharpening flints. His most sophisticated tool was of the age of metals that was just dawning: a copper-bladed ax with a wooden handle.
Further investigations of the body have revealed that a small arrowhead lodged in his shoulder caused the Iceman's death. In his stomach, researchers found the remains of the meat-rich meal he had eaten not long before he died.
Fashioned from vegetable fibers and rawhide (see Environment and Technology: The Iceman).
Although accidents, erratic weather, and disease took a heavy toll on a foraging band, there is no reason to believe that day-to-day existence was particularly hard or unpleasant. Some studies suggest that, under the conditions operating on the African savannas and in other game-rich areas, securing necessary food, clothing, and shelter would have occupied only from three to five hours a day. This would have left a great deal of time for artistic endeavors as well as for toolmaking and social life.
The foundations of what later ages called science, art, and religion were also built during the Stone Age. Basic to human survival was extensive and precise knowledge about the natural environment. Gatherers needed to know which local plants were best for food and the seasons when they were available. Successful hunting required intimate knowledge of the habits of
The Transition to Plant Cultivation
Game animals. People learned how to use plant and animal parts for clothing, twine, and building materials, as well as which natural substances were effective for medicine, consciousness altering, dyeing, and other purposes. Knowledge of the natural world included identifying minerals suitable for paints, stones for making the best tools, and so forth. Given humans’ physical capacity for speech, it is likely that the transmission of such prescientific knowledge involved verbal communication, even though direct evidence for language appears only in later periods.
Early music and dance have left no traces, but there is abundant evidence of painting and drawing (see Diversity and Dominance: Cave Art). The oldest known cave paintings in Europe date to 32,000 years ago, and there are many others from later times in other parts of the world. Because many cave paintings feature wild animals such as oxen, reindeer, and horses that were hunted for food, some believe that the art was meant to record hunting scenes or that it formed part of magical and religious rites to ensure successful hunting. However, a newly discovered cave at Vallon Pont-d’Arc° in southern France features rhinoceroses, panthers, bears, owls, and a hyena, which probably were not the objects of hunting. Still other drawings include people dressed in animal skins and smeared with paint. In many caves there are stencils of human hands. Are these the signatures of the artists or the world’s oldest graffiti? Some scholars suspect that other marks in cave paintings and on bones from this period may represent efforts at counting or writing.
Newer theories suggest that cave and rock art represent concerns with fertility, efforts to educate the young, or elaborate mechanisms for time reckoning. Another approach to understanding such art draws on the traditions of peoples like the San—hunters, gatherers, and artists in southern Africa since time immemorial.
Some cave art suggests that Stone Age people had well-developed religions, but without written religious texts it is difficult to know exactly what they believed. Sites of deliberate human burials from about 100,000 years ago give some hints. The fact that an adult was often buried with stone implements, food, clothing, and red-ochre powder suggests that early people revered their leaders enough to honor them after death and may imply a belief in an afterlife.
Today we recognize that the Stone Age, whose existence was scarcely dreamed of two centuries ago, was a formative period. Important in its own right, it also laid the basis for major changes ahead as human communi-
Vallon Pont-d'Arc (vah-LON pon-DAHRK) ties passed from being food gatherers to food producers. Future discoveries are likely to add substantially to our understanding of these events.
World History
