The Dawn of European Civilization

V. Gordon Childe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136192814
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Originally published between 1920-70, The History of Civilization was a landmark in early twentieth century publishing. It was published at a formative time within the social sciences, and during a period of decisive historical discovery. The aim of the general editor, C.K. Ogden, was to summarize the most up to date findings and theories of historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and sociologists. This reprinted material is available as a set or in the following groupings:
* Prehistory and Historical Ethnography
Set of 12: 0-415-15611-4: £800.00
* Greek Civilization
Set of 7: 0-415-15612-2: £450.00
* Roman Civilization
Set of 6: 0-415-15613-0: £400.00
* Eastern Civilizations
Set of 10: 0-415-15614-9: £650.00
* Judaeo-Christian Civilization
Set of 4: 0-415-15615-7: £250.00
* European Civilization
Set of 11: 0-415-15616-5: £700.00

Chapter I

THE SURVIVAL OF THE FOOD GATHERERS

IT has been customary to divide the history of human civilization at least in Europe into two main phases, the palæolithic or old stone age on the one hand and the neolithic and metal using ages on the other. Throughout the long palæolithic period which reaches back far into geological time, man remained in a state of helpless barbarism, a mere food gatherer dependent for his livelihood on the products of the chase and fishing supplemented by such wild nuts and berries as mother Nature might provide. Palæolithic man had no domestic animals, save the dog and that only late in the epoch, practized no agriculture, was ignorant of pottery, and did not polish stone or flint. The neolithic period saw man master of his own food supply through the possession of domestic animals and cultivated plants, and shaking off the shackles of environment by his skill in fashioning tools for tree-felling and carpentry, by organization for co-operative labour, and by the beginnings of commerce. The study of the palæolithic period belongs to the history of humanity as such. European civilization as a specific and individual expression of human activity only began to take shape during the neolithic epoch.

But the two epochs can no longer be regarded as standing over against one another sharply contrasted and separated by an impassable gulf. The neolithic arts were not suddenly introduced complete and fully developed into an empty continent as our forefathers imagined. A whole series of intermediate stages have come to light to fill the old hiatus. The transitional cultures are sometimes called mesolithic, but the term epipalæolithic is better; for the remains which fill the gap in time do not certainly lead on to the new civilization; only in their light we can recognize palæolithic survivals, albeit as vanishing moments, in the nascent civilization of our continent. However some authorities would in effect deny any fundamental cultural distinction between two periods and attribute to palæolithic man in Europe some of the discoveries traditionally reserved for his neolithic heirs. Dr. Bayer, of Vienna, goes so far as to ascribe the beginnings of agriculture to the Lower Palæolithic inhabitants of southern Europe. Later on in the ice ages, he says, they migrated, taking their civilization with them to Africa and Asia and only returned at the end of our reindeer age.¹ Even if Bayer’s thesis be correct, the Lower Palæolithic is separated from the neolithic by long ages in which food-gatherers developed in Europe the series of cultures—Aurignacian, Solutrean, and Magdelenian—constituting Upper Palæolithic industry.

More germane to our enquiry is the criticism levelled at the old sharp distinction by Mr. Reginald Smith.² He has pointed out that both in this country and France the remains of species resembling the later domestic animals, short- homed cattle, sheep, and swine, have been found in levels corresponding to the Upper Palæolithic industry. However the domestication of the animals is quite unproven and most competent authorities are more than sceptical of palæolithic stock-raising. The same is true of allegedly palæolithic pottery from some French and Belgian caves and the flint mines of Grimes’ Graves in Norfolk.³ The Belgian “sherds” ascribed to the Acheulean epoch dissolved when moistened and the pots attributed to the reindeer age seem to be identical with the late Danubian pottery from the neolithic huts of Hesbaye.⁴ If our troglodyte predecessors really had made the advances here claimed for them, the orthodox view of the position of Britain and Western Europe in the history of civilization would need revision. But it is, to say the least, very curious that the countries which were supposedly so far advanced in the palæolithic age, should be demonstrably very backward in neolithic times. And their backwardness is most marked in the ceramic sphere. In Belgium, apart from the Danubian huts of Hesbaye, neolithic pottery is admittedly poor and rare, while Britain has nothing to compare with the long series of splendid wares from the Ægean, the Danube valley and Scandinavia, which are all older than our bronze age. If palæolithic pottery is to link the old stone age to the new, then the contribution of the former age to European culture is negligible. The hiatus is only recreated. The traditional position may thus be retained. But there were real and demonstrable survivals which will better repay study.

THE AZILIAN-MAGLEMOSE PHASE

Already during the Upper Palæolithic epoch two cultural provinces must be distinguished in western Europe. In the south an intrusive culture coming from Africa, called Capsian ruled, while in northern Spain, France, Switzerland and Belgium the series was evolving which culminated in the bone and horn culture of the Magdelenian reindeer-hunters. Capsian industry was typified by small finely worked flint flakes whose ultimate form was the pigmy flint or microlith. The northern series was based on the large flake, but even here in the reindeer age the sizes were diminished and bone tools were more typical than flints. The authors of both cultures were simply food-gatherers, but the Capsians were more advanced, having domesticated the dog and being skilled with the bow. Both peoples were consummate artists, but again Capsian art was superior in that it could depict complete scenes as against the isolated figures of the French cave paintings and engravings. The Magdelenians were a long-headed race. No skeletons certainly belonging to the palæolithic Capsians are known, but their paintings depict figures with exaggeratedly fat buttocks.⁵ Such steatopygy reappears in early neolithic figurines in the eastern Mediterranean and is even to-day regarded as a mark of beauty in parts of Africa. So it provides additional proof of the African origin of the Capsians.

Such were the dominant cultural groups in western Europe at the close of the glacial period. As modern climatic conditions approached, the reindeer which the Magdelenians had hunted in France, gradually withdrew northward and some of the hunters followed them. At the same time Capsians advanced across the Pyrenees. In the epipalæolithic epoch Capsian culture is represented by the shell-heaps of Mugom in the Tagus valley, by a series of conventionalized paintings and microliths in the caves of Southern and Central Spain and perhaps by the so-called Grimaldi strata in Upper Italy. The Mugom shell-heaps are formed by the kitchen- refuse of a very poor population of hunters and fishers living upon the shore. Among the masses of shells and bones of game (deer, wild swine, canidæ, felidæ, equidæ were innumerable microliths especially the “transverse arrow-head,” Fig. 2, and a few rough implements of bone. Pottery only occurs in the overlying vegetable layer. The hunters buried; their dead doubled up in the mounds themselves. Long-headed types with marked prognathism and distinctly negroid features predominated, but a short-headed element was already present.⁶ These Portuguese brachycephals form the basis of Bosch Gimpera’s conclusion that the Capsians were themselves a mixed race, including “Mediterranean,” negroid and short-headed strains.

FIG. 2. “Transverse arrowheads,” from Mugom and specimen from Denmark to show hafting.

In the centre of the Iberian Peninsula the Capsians continued to decorate the walls of their rock-shelters with drawings which exhibit every degree of conventionalization from the delightful naturalism of the palæolithic paintings (Fig. 1, A), and take us down into the full chalcolithic epoch; for late neolithic idols and even copper daggers are depicted in the caves and the post-palæolithic art is represented on the walls of megalithic tombs and on copper age vases,⁷ Fig. 1. This conventionalization does not, of course, mean a degradation of aesthetic taste; for the cave paintings were no spontaneous expression of art for art’s sake, but served severely practical, i.e., magical, ends. The substitution of an abbreviated symbol for a life-like representation thus marks the progress from concrete to abstract thinking. The mysterious burials in the upper levels of the Grimaldi caves are best regarded as a further extension or parallel development of Capsian culture and the same may have advanced to Central France and even further north. On the other hand the Magdelenian tradition survived in Cantabria, on the slopes of the Pyrenees and of the Alps and in northern Europe, in the Azilian and Maglemose cultures. Such a scattering of the descendants of the reindeer men looks very much as if they had been pushed to one side and driven northward by advancing Capsians. The Azilian culture takes its name from the discoveries in a ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Preface
• I The Survival of the Food Gatherers
• II Minoan Crete and the First Civilization in Europe
• III Maritime Civilization in the Cyclades
• IV The Anatolian Civilization of Troy
• V Continental and Maritime Civilization in Greece
• VI The Spread of Civilization by Sea
• VII Maritime Civilization in the Western Mediterranean
• VIII The Civilizations of the West
• IX The Orient and the Occident
• X The People of the Steppes
• XI The Agriculturalists of the Black-Earth Region
• XII Danubian Civilization
• XIII The Meeting of East and West in Scandinavia
• XIV Food Gatherers and Warriors on the Baltic and in North Russia
• XV The Battle-Axe Folk in Eastern Germany and Poland
• XVI Lake Dwellings and Alpine Civilization
• XVII The Cultures of the South Alpine Slopes and the Italian Bronze Age
• XVIII Atlantic Civilization
• XIX Atlantic and Central European Cultures in Britain
• Epilogue
• Explanation of Maps
• Abbreviations
• Addenda
• Subject Index
• Index of type Sites