Palaeolithic

Palaeolithic, the older Stone Age, the oldest prehistoric division of the human period, when, towards the close of the Glacial Period, man was associated with an assemblage of mammals, many of which are extinct, and used rude stone implements, chipped but not polished. The remains of this age are obtained from high-level river-gravels and brick-earths, and the lower deposits in some caves. The fauna of these deposits contains an admixture of northern and southern types, including lion, hyaena, and hippopotamus, with reindeer, glutton, lemming, and musk-ox, together with the extinct mammoth (q.v.), the woolly rhinoceros, and the cave-bear, and, perhaps, Elephas antiquus, Bones of man himself belonging to this age have but rarely been found; but in some of the caverns in which they do occur, as in that of La Madelaine, in Perigord, they are associated with rudely-executed but graphic incised pictures of the mammoth, reindeer, and other animals, cut by primitive man on bone and ivory. Palaeolithic man in N. Europe seems tc have been mainly engaged in hunting and fishing.