home Epilation The technique of stone processing first appeared in A brief historical sketch of stone processing technology. The emergence and spread of bows and arrows and other types of throwing weapons

The technique of stone processing first appeared in A brief historical sketch of stone processing technology. The emergence and spread of bows and arrows and other types of throwing weapons

The Paleolithic is the longest stage of the Stone Age; it covers the time from the Upper Pliocene to the Holocene, i.e. the entire Pleistocene (Anthropogen, Glacial or Quaternary) geological period. Traditionally, the Paleolithic is divided into early, or lower, including the following eras: Olduvai (about 3 million - 800 thousand years ago), Mousterian (120-100 thousand - 40 thousand years ago) and upper, or late, Paleolithic (40 thousand - 12 thousand years ago).

It should, however, be emphasized that the chronological framework given above is rather arbitrary, since many issues have not been studied fully enough. This is especially true of the boundaries between the Mousterian and the Upper Paleolithic, the Upper Paleolithic and the Mesolithic. In the first case, the difficulties in identifying a chronological boundary are associated with the duration of the process of settlement of modern people, who brought new techniques for processing stone raw materials, and their long coexistence with Neanderthals. Accurately identifying the boundary between the Paleolithic and Mesolithic is even more difficult, since sudden changes in natural conditions, which led to significant changes in material culture, occurred extremely unevenly and had a different character in different geographical zones. However, modern science has adopted a conventional boundary - 10 thousand years BC. e. or 12 thousand years ago, which is accepted by most scientists.

All Paleolithic eras differ significantly from each other both in anthropological characteristics and in the methods of making basic tools and their forms. Throughout the Paleolithic, the physical type of man was formed. In the Early Paleolithic there were various groups of representatives of the genus Homo ( N. habilis, N. ergaster, N. erectus, N. antesesst, H. Heidelbergensis, N. neardentalensis- according to the traditional scheme: archanthropes, paleoanthropes and Neanderthals), the Upper Paleolithic corresponded to the neoanthropus - Homo sapiens, this species includes all modern humanity (see section “Anthropogenesis”).

Due to the vast distance in time, many materials that were used by people, especially organic ones, are not preserved. Therefore, as mentioned above, for studying the lifestyle of ancient people, one of the most important sources is stone tools. From all the variety of rocks, man chose those that give a sharp cutting edge when split. Due to its wide distribution in nature and its inherent physical qualities, flint and other siliceous rocks became such materials.

No matter how primitive the ancient stone tools were, it is quite obvious that their production required abstract thinking and the ability to perform a complex chain of sequential actions. Various types of activities are recorded in the shapes of the working blades of tools, in the form of traces on them, and make it possible to judge the labor operations that ancient people performed.

To make the necessary things from stone, auxiliary tools were required: chippers, mediators, squeezers, retouchers, anvils, which were also made from bone, stone, and wood.

Another equally important source that allows us to obtain a variety of information and reconstruct the life of ancient human groups is the cultural layer of monuments, which is formed as a result of the life activities of people in a certain place. It includes the remains of hearths and residential buildings, traces labor activity in the form of accumulations of splintered stone and bone. Remains of animal bones provide evidence of human hunting activity.

The Paleolithic is the time of the formation of man and society; during this period, the first social formation took shape - the primitive communal system. The entire era was characterized by an appropriating economy: people obtained their means of subsistence by hunting and gathering.

The Paleolithic corresponds to the end of the geological period of the Pliocene and the entire geological period of the Pleistocene, which began about two million years ago and ended around the turn of the 10th millennium BC. e. Its early stage is called the Eiopleistocene, it ends about 800 thousand years ago. Already the Eiopleistocene, and especially the middle and late Pleistocene, is characterized by a series of sharp cold snaps and the development of cover glaciations, occupying a significant part of the land. For this reason, the Pleistocene is called the Ice Age; its other names, often used in specialized literature, are Quaternary or Anthropocene. The table shows the relationship between the main stages of archaeological periodization and the stages of the Ice Age, in which 5 main glaciations are distinguished (according to the Alpine scheme, adopted as an international standard) and the intervals between them, usually called interglacials. The terms are often used in the literature glacial(glaciation) and interglacial(interglacial). Within each glaciation (glacial) there are colder periods called stadials and warmer ones called interstadials. The name of the interglacial (interglacial) consists of the names of two glaciations, and its duration is determined by their time boundaries, for example, the Riess-Würm interglacial lasts from 120 to 80 thousand years ago.

Relationship between the Paleolithic and Pleistocene periods

Glaciation eras were characterized by significant cooling and the development of ice cover over large areas of land, which led to a sharp drying of the climate and changes in the flora and fauna. On the contrary, during the interglacial era there was a significant warming and humidification of the climate, which also caused corresponding changes in the environment. Ancient man depended to a huge extent on the natural conditions surrounding him, so their significant changes required fairly rapid adaptation, i.e. flexible change of methods and means of life support.

At the beginning of the Pleistocene, despite the onset of global cooling, a fairly warm climate remained - not only in Africa and the equatorial belt, but even in the southern and central regions of Europe, Siberia and the Far East, broad-leaved forests grew. These forests were home to such heat-loving animals as the hippopotamus, southern elephant, rhinoceros and saber-toothed tiger (mahairod).

Günz was separated from the Mindel, the first very serious glaciation for Europe, by a large interglacial, which was relatively warm. The ice of the Mindel glaciation reached the mountain ranges in southern Germany, and in Russia - to the upper reaches of the Oka and the middle reaches of the Volga. On the territory of Russia this glaciation is called Oka. There were some changes in the composition of the animal world: heat-loving species began to die out, and in areas located closer to the glacier, cold-loving animals appeared - the musk ox and the reindeer. This was followed by a warm interglacial era - the Mindelris interglacial - which preceded the Ris (Dnieper for Russia) glaciation, which was the maximum. On the territory of European Russia, the ice of the Dnieper glaciation, having divided into two tongues, reached the area of the Dnieper rapids and approximately to the area of the modern Volga-Don Canal. The climate has cooled significantly, cold-loving animals have spread: mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, wild horses, bison, aurochs and cave predators: cave bear, cave lion, cave hyena. Reindeer, musk ox, and arctic fox lived in the periglacial areas.

The Riess-Würm interglacial - a time of very favorable climatic conditions - was replaced by the last great glaciation of Europe - the Würm or Valdai glaciation.

The last - Würm (Valdai) glaciation (80-12 thousand years ago) was shorter than the previous ones, but much more severe. Although the ice covered a much smaller area, covering the Valdai Hills in Eastern Europe, the climate was much drier and colder. A feature of the animal world of the Würm period was the mixing in the same territories of animals characteristic of different landscape zones in our time. The mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, and musk ox existed alongside the bison, red deer, horse, and saiga. Common predators were cave and brown bears, lions, wolves, arctic foxes, and wolverines. This phenomenon can be explained by the fact that the boundaries of landscape zones, compared to modern ones, were greatly shifted to the south.

By the end of the Ice Age, the development of the culture of ancient people had reached a level that allowed them to adapt to new, much more harsh living conditions. Recent geological and archaeological studies have shown that the first stages of human development of the lowland territories of the Arctic fox, lemming, and cave bear in the European part of Russia belong specifically to the cold eras of the late Pleistocene. Settlement pattern primitive man on the territory of Northern Eurasia was determined not so much by climatic conditions as by the nature of the landscape. Most often, Paleolithic hunters settled in the open spaces of the tundra-steppes in the permafrost zone, and in the southern steppes-forest-steppes - outside it. Even during the maximum cold period (28-20 thousand years ago), people did not leave their traditional habitats. The fight against the harsh nature of the glacial period had a great influence on the cultural development of Paleolithic man.

Lower-Middle Pleistocene animals

Upper Pleistocene animals

The final cessation of glacial phenomena dates back to the 10th-9th millennia BC. With the retreat of the glacier, the Pleistocene era ends, followed by the Holocene - the modern geological period. Along with the retreat of the glacier to the extreme northern borders of Eurasia, natural conditions characteristic of the modern era began to form.

Let us turn to the direct characteristics of archaeological eras.

Olduvai era (3 million - 800 thousand years ago)

This era got its name from the monuments of the Olduvai Gorge in Kenya (East Africa), discovered and studied by archaeologists Mary and Louis Leakey in the 60s. XX century Monuments of the early stage of this era, dating back to the Eopleistocene, are still few in number and discovered mainly in Africa. Only one such monument has been discovered in Europe - the Vallone Grotto in France, but its Early Pleistocene age is not indisputable. In the Caucasus, in southern Georgia, the Dmanisi site, 1.6 million years old, is being investigated, where, in addition to a series of stone artifacts, a Homo erectus jaw was found.

Monuments dating back to the late Olduvai period are more widespread - they are known in South and Southeast Asia and in Europe. The Vertescelles site was discovered in Hungary, where the bone remains of an archanthropus were found along with Olduvai tools. In western Ukraine there is a multi-layered Korolevo site, the lower layers of which can be dated back to the Olduvai period. The distribution of Olduvai monuments allows us to judge the process of settlement of the most ancient people from their original center of origin in Africa across the territory of Eurasia (see figure on p. 36).

Stone tools and techniques for their production

Sometimes the Olduvai stone industry is called the pebble culture, or pebble culture, but this is not entirely correct, because In addition to pebbles, other stone raw materials were also used. It should be noted that traditions of making products by rough pebbling exist in some regions, such as South and Southeast Asia, throughout the Paleolithic era.

Chipping is the technique of chopping off a number of fairly large fragments from the original core, or blank. Chips, as a rule, are located along its perimeter and directed towards the center, thereby forming an edge. If one side of an object is covered with upholstery, then the upholstery is called one-sided, and the object is called monoface, if the upholstery extends to both surfaces, it is called double-sided, and the item is called biface. The technique of single-sided and double-sided padding is particularly characteristic of early archaeological eras, although it is present throughout the Stone Age. The upholstery technique was widely used in the manufacture cores, choppers,hand choppers.

The Olduvian era is characterized by three main groups of tools: polyhedrons, choppers, and flake tools.

1. Polyhedra- These are roughly processed, rounded stones with many edges obtained as a result of beating. Among the polyhedra, discoids, spheroids, and cuboids stand out. It is assumed that they were impact tools and served for processing plant and animal food.

Guns of the Olduvai era: 1 - chopper; 2, 3 - shopping; 4, 5, 8 - tools on flakes; 6, 7 - disc-shaped cores

2. Choppers and choppers- the most characteristic tools of the era. These are massive tools, made, as a rule, from pebbles, the end or edge of which is hewn and sharpened by several successive blows, forming a blade. When the blade is processed on one side, the product is called chopper; in cases where the blade is chipped on both sides, it is called chopping.

The rest of the surface of the tool is untreated and is comfortable to hold in the hand; the blade is massive and uneven, has cutting and chopping functions. These tools could be used for cutting up animal carcasses and processing plant materials.

3. Tools on flakes were produced in several stages. Initially, a natural piece of rock was given a certain specific shape, i.e. a nucleus, or kernel, was made. From such cores, short and massive chips, called flakes, were obtained by directed blows.

The flakes were then subjected to special processing, the purpose of which was to form blades and working edges. One of the common types of such secondary processing of stone is called retouching in archeology: this is a system of small and minute chips that give the product the desired shape and working qualities.

Flake tools are represented by side scrapers, flakes with jagged and notched edges, and rough points. In addition, scrapers and incisors are extremely rare, but these types became widespread only in the Upper Paleolithic. All Olduvian tools are characterized by instability of shape. Tools made from flakes could be used in various labor operations - cutting, scraping, piercing, etc.

It is worth noting that already at the initial stage of making tools they are represented by a whole set of products capable of providing people with a variety of plant and animal food, simple clothing and satisfying other needs, including the production of other tools. The main technique in their production is upholstery, and retouching is used only to decorate some details. The size of the products usually does not exceed 8-10 cm, but larger ones are occasionally found.

Often the tools themselves have a seemingly random shape, but the methods of processing the blades and working edges are quite stable and make it possible to identify certain groups of products presented at different sites. Their artificial origin is beyond doubt among experts. Numerous tools are found in the cultural layers of Olduvai sites, as well as tools from later Stone Age eras, which indicates their deliberate manufacture.

Monuments of the developed Olduvai indicate that the oldest and longest (at least 1.5 million years) era of human history was characterized by very slow progress in tool making technology. By the end of Olduvai, no major changes in the shape of the products and their composition are observed; only their slight enlargement can be noted.

The superbly crafted "bay leaf" from France (shown at life size on the left and in wide shot on the right) is so fragile that it could not serve any practical purpose. Its length is 28 centimeters, and its thickness is only one centimeter, and perhaps it represented some kind of ritual object or even served as a proud emblem of a skilled craftsman

Perhaps in the distant future, when the internal combustion engine has become a funny ancient curiosity, penicillin has been considered a quack drug, and steel has fallen out of use, archaeologists studying the 20th century will never cease to be amazed that people with such primitive and limited technology managed to live at all not bad. In the same way, today, many, imagining their Cro-Magnon ancestors as beast-like creatures who chopped up a mammoth carcass with blunt stone fragments, are perplexed how such people with such tools managed to survive in the harsh conditions of the Ice Age.

How caricatured such a concept is becomes clear to anyone who has ever held and examined a Stone Age tool like the famous “laurel leaf” depicted on the page to the left. The impeccable proportions and exquisite workmanship of this flint blade irrefutably prove that its maker could not have been a clumsy dunce, and testify to a remarkable technical achievement. In reality, Cro-Magnon man was a skilled and inventive tool maker and made the greatest leap in the history of technology. In 30 thousand years, he has advanced along the path of progress much further than all his predecessors in 1.3 million years, and has subjugated the environment much more than they did.

He was an incomparable mason and, improving on previous methods, he produced much more varied and effective tools from flint and other suitable rocks. But, in addition, he learned to process other materials - bone, horns, tusks - that had hardly been used before, and created new weapons from them, came up with new techniques to use them more effectively, as well as new household items and decorations. He learned to make fire better and faster and applied it to new purposes. Some of the dwellings he built were only one step away from real houses, they were much stronger than all the previous ones and better protected from cold, rain and wind; and when the climate changed, man was able to cope with new difficulties. Technological innovations and the development of material culture replaced physical evolution: man was now increasingly breaking ties with his animal past. He still depended on nature, but she no longer controlled him. From the tropics to the Arctic, he thrived in his relationship with nature, and overall his life in all geographic areas was a fulfilling life.

The improvement of stone tools was the decisive moment of the new technical achievements of Cro-Magnon man, but, no matter how funny it may be, no one knows the purpose of the most beautiful examples of his new skill - thin plates, like the twenty-eight-centimeter "bay leaf", which received this name for its shape. Too thin to be a knife, too large and fragile to be a spearhead, this superbly crafted piece of flint appears to be a deliberate display of craftsmanship. Undoubtedly, the manufacture of an object of such harmonious proportions required a skill bordering on art, and many archaeologists believe that masterpieces like this were precisely works of art that served an aesthetic and ritual function and had no utilitarian purpose. Perhaps these were highly valued gifts that were passed from one person to another, from one group to another.

If such large “laurel leaves” were not made for practical use, they are a clear example of the transition of technology to a different quality - after all, the smaller conventional tools, after which these masterpieces were created, had a purely practical purpose. Excavations in western Europe have yielded thousands of stone points of varying sizes, and undoubtedly many of them would have made excellent spear points or razor-edged knives. These were the most important weapons in the arsenal of a people who, living and hunting in the game-rich regions of Europe, depended less and less on the mere strength of their biceps and more and more on the strength of their intellect and the efficiency of their weapons in the struggle for existence.

The stone blades were undeniably sharp and effective. Modern experiments have shown that well-processed flint tips are sharper than iron tips and penetrate deeper into the animal's body. And in terms of cutting ability, flint knives are equal to or even superior to steel ones. The only drawback of flint tips and knives is their fragility, due to which they break much more often.

The most important role of these tools in the life of the Cro-Magnons led experts to the idea that large, practically useless masterpieces - and several dozen of them were found - could be ritual objects, embodiments of the ideal spear tip. There is, however, an assumption that the magnificent “bay leaf” was made by a virtuoso master simply to demonstrate his art. In this case, the admiration and praise he received from family, friends or group was well deserved. "Bay Leaf" is undoubtedly a masterpiece, and in modern world there are only a handful of people so skilled in the ancient craft that they could create something like this.

It is quite natural, although perhaps a little sad, that a skill that has been around for over a million years a necessary condition human existence has almost disappeared over the past few centuries. Some hunter-gatherer tribes - such as the Australian Aborigines - still make stone arrow and spear points and scrapers, but they increasingly prefer modern metals to stone. In an industrial society, in different places, there are some craft communities that practice to one degree or another ancient art. For example, peasants in the Turkish village of Cakmak insert flint flints into wooden sleds, which serve as threshers for them to pull back and forth over ears of wheat. In England, in Brandon, two or three artisans still make flints for flintlocks used at American festivities dedicated to the War of Independence. And finally, in different countries individual enthusiasts (mostly archaeologists) independently studied the intricacies of flint processing in order to learn more about the life of prehistoric man and more accurately establish how he used his tools (see pp. 81-89),

It is very difficult to acquire the necessary skill. First of all, you need to know the material - the stone from which you are going to cut pieces, so that you can then process them to make this or that tool. The best stones have a uniform fine structure. As a matter of fact, the most convenient material for processing is not even stone, but glass. Glass insulators on telegraph poles in remote areas of Australia were disappearing faster than they could be replaced - local Aborigines discovered that they made excellent tools. Eventually, workers began leaving piles of insulators at the posts as a gift to the masons.

However, glass is a very fragile material, and obsidian (volcanic glass) is rare in nature. In second place behind it is flint. Its fine crystalline structure allows the master to give the future weapon the desired shape. The coarse-grained structure and various defects make it difficult to process granites or layered stones like slate with the same confidence. If flint was not available, craftsmen used stones with the finest structure they could find, such as quartzite or basalt.

The art of processing lies in knowing where and how to work on the stone. It is either directly struck with a stone, bone or wooden hammer, or a bone chisel is used, or it is pressed firmly at the intended point with a pointed tool, such as the tip of a deer antler. But the force of impact or pressure must always be controlled with absolute precision, and the master must feel all the planes and angles of the structure of the stone he has chosen. When he acquires the necessary dexterity, it is relatively easy for him to knock off or squeeze out a flake of the required size with razor-sharp edges from the stone.

These two properties of some types of stone - the relative ease of processing and the tendency to produce sharp edges when broken - became the basis of man's first technology, and for hundreds of thousands of years the ability to use them was the measure of his technical progress. At first, he used one of two main methods: either he hit stone against stone to sharpen one of them into a handaxe or striker, or he knocked off flakes with sharp edges from one stone and used these flakes as tools. Over time, he discovered how to cut flakes of a predetermined size and shape and how to process and retouch them, then using them for specific purposes - a scraper to clean skins, a spearhead to kill animals, an ax to chop or chop wood.

Another improvement appeared in Cro-Magnon times. Prehistoric craftsmen in Europe learned to cut very thin, so-called knife-shaped plates from stone cores, the length of which was at least twice as wide as the width, and both edges were so sharp that they sometimes had to be blunted so that the plate could be grasped in the hand. A high degree of skill is required to produce knife-shaped plates.

The craftsman first shapes the flint nodule into a roughly cylindrical shape, and then, one by one, breaks off the plates from the outer edge in a longitudinal direction, either by applying a strong squeeze or by accurately striking the upper edge of the core. The breaking off pieces are equal in length to the core (usually 25-30 centimeters), but their thickness, as a rule, is several millimeters. Each new plate breaks off exactly next to the previous one - and so on around the entire core until it is almost completely used. Then various tools are made from these plates. Good master can obtain more than 50 wafers from one core, spending literally minutes on the entire operation.

This cut and drilled deer antler, found in the Dordogne (France) and made 15 thousand years ago, belongs to the mysterious Cro-Magnon products that modern experts call the "chief's staff" (based on the assumption that it served as a symbol of power). Later wands were decorated with intricate carvings

The knife plate method is much more economical than the more ancient flake method. From a given amount of flint, more blades are obtained, and in addition, the working edge of such a blade is five times longer than that of a flake. Such savings may not have been significant in areas where good flint was abundant; for example, in England, so-called chalk flints are found very often and of all kinds of sizes - from pieces the size of a chicken egg to fifty-kilogram nodules. However, for a group of hunter-gatherers living in areas not rich in flint, such an advantage is obvious. As S.A. Semenov, a Soviet specialist and expert on Stone Age tools, pointed out, “a person, using a small amount of flint, now achieves a much greater result.”

Interestingly, the knife-blade tools found in the Soviet Union, at Kostenki on the Don River (see pp. 49-57), were made from flint mined at least 150 kilometers away. For the hunters who lived in Kostenki, it undoubtedly made sense to chop off as many plates as possible from the nodule. The plates were struck directly at the site of flint mining, which also saved time and effort. If the nodule turned out to have a defect, it could immediately be easily replaced with another one; the fragments broken off during the preliminary processing of the nodule remained in place, and the people returning to Kostenki with unfinished plates carried only the payload.

The knife-blade method was probably of great help to hunters who went on multi-day expeditions into areas where not only flints, but also other fine-grained rocks were scarcely found. They could take with them a supply of cores or plates so that they would have something to replace spear tips that broke off during an unsuccessful throw or remained in the wound of an animal that managed to escape. And the edges of the flint knives, which were used to cut joints and tendons, broke off and became dull. Thanks to the knife-plate method, new tools could be made on the spot.

The increasing sophistication of tool making appears to have played a decisive role in the rapid increase in diversity in the cultures of the Cro-Magnon groups. Homo erectus's hackles were roughly the same whether he lived in Spain or East Africa, and similarly, wherever Neanderthals lived, their scrapers and knives were similar to each other - sometimes so much that it seemed as if they were made by the same person. But with the advent of the Cro-Magnons, the situation changes. At the beginning of their era in western Europe, according to the French classification, there were two main types of tool making - Aurignacian and Périgordian (named after the areas where their first examples were found) with some variations in each. In later Cro-Magnon times, two other cultures dominated - Solutrean and Magdalenian.

The people who made Aurignacian and Périgord scrapers apparently lived at the same time or almost simultaneously. This gave rise to a number of mysteries. Did each type represent a distinct culture? Were these people physically different from each other? Do the differences in stone implements not reflect the differences in climate, flora and fauna familiar to each of these groups? Or are these just differences in style? Perhaps one group in some cases made different tools - or the same tools, but in different quantities - depending on seasonal activity and certain situations.

Now it seems that it can be firmly assumed that some variations in the manufacture of tools simply reflect the individuality or preferences of those who made them, and not differences in functional purpose. Craftsmen who lived in the same area and, perhaps, were related to each other, developed a certain method of processing flint, and therefore the tools received a similar shape. These masters jealously maintained their style and passed it on to new generations as an expression of their personality - as a signature. There is no doubt that the art, painting and jewelry of Cro-Magnon man clearly indicate growing self-expression and self-awareness. It is likely that the same trends were reflected in some of his weapons. But no matter how individual in dressing the tools included in various Cro-Magnon inventories were, in terms of their intended purpose these implements had much in common. Each of them included many more specialized tools than those used by more ancient people. Archaeologists distinguish 60-70 types of tools in the stone inventory of some Neanderthals - scrapers that should have been held horizontally, knives with blunt backs, double-edged knives, and so on. But the Cro-Magnon inventory contains over a hundred types of them - knives for cutting meat, knives for planing wood, bone scrapers, skin scrapers, drills, piercings, stone saws, chisels, grinding plates and many others. Cro-Magnon man was a great innovator. Among other things, he apparently began attaching handles of bone and deer antlers to many of his stone tools, such as axes and knives. The handles doubled or tripled the force applied to a given implement, providing a stronger grip and allowing much greater use of the arm and shoulder muscles.

One of the most important tools improved by the Cro-Magnon man was the chisel. It would be very tempting to say that he invented it, but incisors have also been found in some Neanderthal artifacts and even in Homo erectus. However, in the hands of the first modern man, incisors gradually became better, more useful and more varied. Nowadays, a chisel is called, for example, a tool of a sculptor, engraver, etc. In the Stone Age, it was a tool with a strong, sharply beveled edge or point, used to cut, notch and process materials such as bone, horns, wood and sometimes stone. Thus, the main difference between the chisel and the vast majority of other Stone Age tools was that it was not used to kill animals, cut meat, peel skins, or cut down young trees for poles. It was intended for the manufacture of other tools and devices, that is, it had the same function as modern tool machines. With the advent of tools for making other tools, the technique of Cro-Magnon man was able to develop many times faster than before.

With the help of a chisel, many different wooden devices were probably made, but only minor fragments of them have survived. Therefore, the best proof of the effectiveness of the chisel are the tools processed by it - magnificent tools, which, like the chisel itself, testify to the remarkable achievements of the Cro-Magnon man.

Three main organic materials - bone, horn and ivory - helped meet the needs of the growing material culture of the Cro-Magnons, and the chisel opened up the possibility of a wide variety of their uses. Homo erectus and Neanderthals used bones to a certain extent - for scraping, piercing and digging - but not nearly as extensively as Cro-Magnon. When excavating a typical Neanderthal site, for every thousand stone tools found, there are at most 25 made of bone. In Cro-Magnon settlements this ratio is equal to one to one, or there are even more bone tools than stone ones.

Bone, horn and ivory were the wonder materials of Cro-Magnon times - about the same as plastics today. They are much stronger and harder than wood, and also less fragile and therefore more convenient for processing. They could be cut, hollowed out, jagged, scored and sharpened into a variety of shapes. They could be turned into tiny devices like needles or used for heavy work: a deer antler makes an excellent pick, any of the long bones of a mammoth's legs, split lengthwise, is an almost finished scoop, needing only a handle. Ivory could be steamed and bent, which opened up new possibilities for making tools.

And besides, these materials did not have to be specially mined: the Cro-Magnons were supplied with them in abundance by the very animals they constantly hunted. It goes without saying that all animals have bones, and many of the large herbivores - red deer, reindeer and mammoths - also had antlers or tusks. Antlers are a true gift from nature: after all, every year deer shed their antlers, so people could only pick them up. Since at one time red and reindeer were especially numerous in western Europe, their antlers were used more widely than bone or tusks. In some treeless areas in eastern Europe and Siberia, the source of raw materials for tools were the skeletons of mammoths that died of natural causes or were driven into a trap by hunters. The average mammoth tusk reached a length of almost three meters and weighed more than forty kilograms - many tools and all kinds of devices could be made from such an amount of raw materials.

True, bone, horns and tusks required special tools for processing. And this is where the cutter came in handy. Its strong, chisel-like edge easily cut and chiseled through bone without breaking it. To cut the bone, the craftsman made a deep groove around its circumference, and then with a sharp blow he broke it evenly in the right place - just like today a glazier runs a diamond along the glass and then breaks it off.

To make a needle, piercing or awl, it was enough to scratch two deep parallel grooves with a chisel to a softer core, after which the strip between the grooves was broken out and given the desired shape (see pp. 86-87). From pieces of bone, in addition, it was possible to make polishes, scrapers, beads, bracelets, digging tools and much more.

In addition to household utensils, spearheads, darts and jagged ends of harpoons were made from bone and horns, which helped the Cro-Magnons to make fuller use of the abundance of all kinds of game. Perhaps, such a number of edible herbivores have never inhabited our planet - mammoths, horses, red and reindeer, wild boars, bison in Europe and Asia, and in Africa lived all the animals that now exist in it, and many others, now extinct, including the giant relatives of the buffalo, the buffalo and the zebra. As the English archaeologist Graham Clark put it, from a Cro-Magnon point of view, these animals existed “to transform plants into meat, fat and raw materials such as hides, sinews, bones and horns” - and the first modern people put all their considerable ingenuity to use, to use these gifts of nature as fully as possible.

Archaeologists have found two striking evidence of Cro-Magnon hunting skills in Europe. Near the town of Pavlova in Czechoslovakia, the remains of more than 100 mammoth skeletons were unearthed in one colossal pile, and near Solutre, in France, an even more stunning pile contained the fossils of approximately 10,000 wild horses lying haphazardly under a high cliff. The mammoth bones apparently came from animals that hunters killed in pit traps. Skilled hunters who knew the terrain and the habits of their prey may have organized raids on horses and driven them to this cliff, from where the animals jumped down in panic, and this was repeated from year to year, from generation to generation.

It is very likely that the people of that era, including the ancestors of the Indians who eventually settled the plains of North America, were able to hunt big game like no other in the history of mankind. They undoubtedly knew which plants these animals preferred, they knew when seasonal migrations began and at what speed the animals moved, they knew what scared them and what calmed them down. They knew where to dig pit traps and where to place belt loops with bait. They knew how to direct animals into natural or specially constructed pens - either by scaring the herd, or skillfully and imperceptibly turning it in the right direction. Animals caught in the trap were finished off with spears or knives and the carcasses were butchered on the spot. The meat was then taken to the parking lot, perhaps after preliminary processing: for example, by cutting it into narrow strips, and then smoking or drying it.

These hunters undoubtedly knew the anatomy of their prey and understood the benefits of eating certain organs. Modern Eskimos of interior Alaska save the adrenal glands of killed caribou for small children and pregnant women. Chemical analysis of these endocrine glands has shown that they are surprisingly rich in vitamin C, which is absolutely necessary for humans, but is included in only a relatively small number of components of the Eskimo diet. And without overestimating the knowledge of Cro-Magnon hunters in this regard, one can still assume that they also knew very well which parts of the killed game were especially useful, and not just tasty.

A deep understanding of the habits and characteristics of game, combined with significant improvements in hunting equipment, greatly increased the amount of meat obtained. People have long had wooden spears with burnt ends or sharp stone tips. With these spears they acted like pikes or threw them from afar, but a spear thrown by hand was unlikely to often inflict a serious wound even on a young deer, not to mention the thick-skinned giant bison, especially if it was thrown after a fleeing animal. Cro-Magnon hunters invented a spear thrower, which helped them hit game more accurately at a noticeably greater distance.

As evidenced by finds in the French cave of La Placard, this device appeared at least 14 thousand years ago. Fragments of spear throwers were found there, including an oblong piece of bone with a tooth at the end, very similar to a huge crochet hook. In general, about 70 spear throwers made from deer antlers were found in southwestern France and near Lake Constance, but in the Old World they are found almost nowhere else - perhaps because they were made from short-lived wood and they rotted a long time ago. About 10 thousand years ago, wooden spear throwers were used by the Indians of North and South America. The Aztecs called them "atlatl". The Eskimos used them until very recently, and they are still in use among the Australian Aborigines, who call them "woomera."

To put it simply, a spear thrower is like an extension of the human hand, lengthening it by 30-60 centimeters. One end serves as a handle, and the other has a barb or hook to hold the blunt end of the spear (see pages 28-29). The hunter raises the spear thrower over his shoulder with the prong upward and places the spear on it so that the sharp end is directed forward and slightly upward. To throw a spear, he sharply throws his hand forward, and it breaks off the prong of the spear thrower at the top point of the arc it describes with a high initial speed due to the centrifugal force that arises. The hunter continues to hold the spear thrower, which may have a strap attached to the end that wraps around his wrist. The spear flies faster than when thrown by hand, since the spear thrower extends the lever and the end with the tooth moves faster than the end held in the fingers.

Modern experiments have shown the enormous advantage of the spear thrower. A two-meter spear thrown by hand flies no more than 60-70 meters, and a spear thrower sends it 150 meters with such force that it kills a deer 30 meters away. This increase in range played a colossal role for the prehistoric hunter. He no longer had to sneak up close to his prey; he even often managed to throw a spear before the animals noticed him and took flight. Now a person could hunt alone: it was no longer necessary to surround the animal before hitting it with a spear. And it goes without saying that the spear thrower made hunting safer, as it allowed one to keep a respectful distance from teeth, horns and hooves. The benefits of all this are obvious: hunters who caught game more often and were less likely to be wounded lived better and longer.

The first spear throwers were undoubtedly made from wood, like modern Australian woomeras, but they were soon made from deer antlers. These later Cro-Magnons, called Maglenians, decorated their spear throwers with carved figures and designs, and possibly painted them - traces of red ocher remain in the recesses of one, while the eyes on others are blackened. Many spear throwers amaze with the grace and expressiveness of the animals depicted on them - horses, deer, mountain goats, bison, birds and fish (see page 98). This combination of aesthetics and utilitarianism is visible in many aspects of the life of Cro-Magnon man. At least three spear-throwers seem to indicate Rabelaisian humor - all three depict mountain goats defecating with amazing art.

This piece of iron pyrite (magnified by one and a half times), the oldest known "fire stone", was found in a Belgian cave, where it lay for 10 thousand years or more. A deep notch in a rounded piece of pyrite appeared as a result of constant strikes with flint, striking sparks. Apparently the Cro-Magnons were the first to discover that flint and iron pyrites produced sparks hot enough to ignite tinder.

The spear itself has also changed. By this time, hunters realized that a jagged tip caused more severe wounds than a smooth one. Harpoon-type tips, made from bone and antler, often had several barbs on one or both sides. Another improvement was dictated by the fact that the spear, even hitting an animal, rarely killed it outright. The hunters pursued it until it weakened from loss of blood, and then they finished it off. To speed up this process, hunters began to make tips with deep grooves on both sides - these grooves, apparently, were intended to allow blood to flow out of the wound faster and more easily.

Perhaps a mysterious device, which was given the name “chief’s rod,” was also associated with hunting. These wands were made of horns or bone and varied noticeably in length, although they were rarely more than 30 centimeters. They are Y-shaped or T-shaped, and a hole is necessarily drilled under the fork of the "Y" or under the crossbar of the "T". Unlike the deadly tips, which are simple and serrated, their purpose remains intriguingly unclear.

Many archaeologists believe that it was ritual - that the wands, like sceptres, served as a symbol of status or authority for those who had the right to bear them. Some wands are clearly phallic in shape and may have had some magical powers attributed to them. Other archaeologists offer a completely prosaic explanation and consider them to be a device for straightening arrows - if a bent arrow shaft is inserted into a hole and its ends are secured, then, using the rod as a lever, the bend can be straightened, especially if the shaft is first steamed or soaked.

In addition, the staff could be used as a hunting weapon - a kind of sling, consisting of a handle and a piece of leather secured to it with straps passed through a hole. Other explanations were also proposed - from the most everyday (pegs for dwellings made of skins) to the humorous (see page 65). But for now the mystery of the wands remains unsolved.

A different kind of mystery is the question of whether the Cro-Magnons used bows and arrows. There is no clear archaeological evidence that they had such weapons, at least not until the very end of their era. Since bows are usually made from wood and sinew or guts, it would truly be a miracle if any of them survived from the last glaciation. In Denmark, two bows with an antiquity of about 8 thousand years were found, and to the southeast, excavations of sites of reindeer hunters were found a large number of wooden arrows with stone tips, made approximately 10 thousand years ago. In the French cave of La Colombiere, small stones were discovered, perhaps more than 20 thousand years old, with scratched designs that seem to depict feathered projectiles, but it is impossible to decide whether they are arrows or darts.

However, it is clear that Cro-Magnon man had enough intelligence and resourcefulness to invent the bow. He knew that bent young trees straighten sharply if they are released; he had leather belts, and he almost certainly knew that the dried tendons and intestines of animals were very strong and elastic. This is why many archaeologists are now convinced that some Cro-Magnon hunters used bows earlier than ten thousand years BC, although no material evidence of this has survived.

Undoubtedly, the bow provided the Cro-Magnon hunter with enormous benefits. The spear thrower, with all its advantages, forced him to run out into the open, and if the throw was unsuccessful, the frightened animals would flee. But with a bow, he could remain in cover and, having missed, send another arrow - and another, and another. In addition, the arrow flew faster than the spear and hit harder at greater distances. Using a bow, it was easier to hit running or small prey, as well as flying birds.

Perhaps, in expanding the diet of the Cro-Magnons and in the development of areas previously unsuitable for human habitation, the invention of various devices for fishing played an even greater role than the spear thrower and bow. People had previously enjoyed the gifts of streams, rivers and the sea, but for some Cro-Magnons, fishing became the main occupation. For example, archaeological material left behind by hunter-gatherers who lived in the Nelson Bay Cave in South Africa indicates that here, too, the improvement of tools and devices was a necessary condition for successful survival.

One of these ingenious inventions was a spear-point with two curved bone teeth attached to the sides, which held the fish pierced by the point. A fish cross was also used - a small bone or wooden stick about 5 centimeters, tied at the middle to a long leather strap or tendon. The fisherman threw a baited rod into the water, the fish swallowed the bait, the bait got stuck in its throat, and the fisherman pulled the catch ashore.

Somewhat later in South Africa, and perhaps also in Europe, people began to fish in much larger quantities than ever before. Small, cylindrical, grooved stones found in South Africa may have been suspended as weights on nets woven from straps or plant fibers. With the help of nets, two or three fishermen could catch a whole school of fish at one time.

Perhaps the Cro-Magnons also used stone fences, which primitive tribes still use for fishing. They would be particularly effective on rivers such as the Dordogne and Vézère in France, where salmon would move upstream in a single live stream during spawning days. It is quite possible to assume that during the spawning season, small groups went to the river far from the main site to prepare salmon for everyone. The fish was probably cleaned and dried in the sun or smoked over fires right there and taken away ready for storage. In France, in Solvier, excavations discovered a large rectangle neatly laid out with small stones. Its location and shape suggest that it was used for drying fish.

The systematic exploitation of the abundant protein resources of the seas, rivers and lakes, including not only fish, but also a variety of shellfish, according to anthropologist Bernard Campbell, was of great importance not only because it expanded the basis of the human diet, but also because it led man to the next a great step in cultural evolution - towards settled life. When the Cro-Magnons received such a reliable addition to their meat and vegetable diet as fish and shellfish, the need to constantly wander in search of prey began to disappear. Thanks to the networks, they obtained more food with less effort than before, when they were simply wandering hunter-gatherers, and therefore a larger number of people could live in one place without starving. In a world with a rapidly increasing population, the possibility of transition to a sedentary lifestyle played a decisive role.

For people at the end of the Ice Age, improving tools and methods of obtaining food was the main, but not the only concern. As they learned to take more and more of nature's gifts, they found more effective ways protection from its harshness. The production of carefully sewn, tailored clothing helped them conquer the far north and opened the way to the deserted expanses of the American continent.

Cro-Magnon skin clothing probably resembled national clothes Eskimos. A shirt with tightly sewn seams to retain body heat, trousers that can be easily tucked into boots, and something like socks, possibly fur, allow you to feel normal in any weather, except for the most severe cold. A outerwear, consisting of a fur jacket with a hood, mittens and fur boots, does not allow a person to freeze even in bitter frosts. Some Stone Age figurines found in the Soviet Union appear to depict women dressed in furs. But even in milder climates, well-tailored clothing has clear advantages - the most ancient needles with an eye were made by the same Solutrean craftsmen who created the amazing “bay leaves”.

For hunter-gatherers battling the icy cold of the North, it was even more important warm clothes there was fire. Since the time of Homo erectus, people have used it for cooking. In addition, it gave them light, warmth and protection from dangerous predators. But the Cro-Magnons found other uses for fire. To begin with, they are the first of the people who left evidence of their ability to quickly make fire in case of need. A rounded piece of iron pyrite was found in a Belgian cave. This mineral is one of the few natural substances from which flint produces sparks capable of igniting dry tinder - the sparks produced by striking flint on flint or a simple stone on another simple stone are not hot enough. Moreover, on the surface of the Belgian pyrite there is a notch formed by numerous blows. Finding a piece of iron pyrite is far from easy, and therefore “fire stones” were undoubtedly very valuable and the group carried them with them on all their travels.

An even more striking example of the power that Cro-Magnon man continued to acquire over fire (evidence of which has been found in the Soviet Union and France) seems at first glance quite uninteresting - these are the shallow grooves in the bottom of the hearth and the groove extending from it. Such a simple innovation may have gone unnoticed more than once during earlier excavations. But, in essence, this was the first step on the path to modern blast furnaces. The fact is that a fire burns hotter if it receives more air, that is, more oxygen. The recesses and grooves of these prehistoric hearths opened the way for air to reach the fuel, and the flames produced more heat.

For the ancient inhabitants of the Russian steppes, who built such hearths, this device was absolutely necessary because of the fuel they used. Due to the lack of trees, they were forced to make do with fuel burning in normal conditions very bad. They burned the same miracle material that revolutionized the production of tools - bone. Although it is difficult to ignite and burns poorly, since the flammable substances in it make up only 25%, the bone produces enough heat. And the prehistoric Russian steppe dwellers used bones as logs, which is proven by the absence of charcoal and significant amounts of bone ash in their specially blown hearths.

Hearth meant home, and Cro-Magnon man, who changed so many things, also changed the concept of home. Living in caves and under rocky overhangs that had previously sheltered his predecessors, he - at least in some places - seemed to be more concerned about the cleanliness of his home: garbage no longer accumulated inside, but was thrown out.

The improvements of Cro-Magnon dwellings are especially noticeable in those areas where there were no ready-made shelters. In Central and Eastern Europe, as well as in Siberia, many remains of strong structures were found in open areas. Apparently, they lived in them, although not all year round, but more or less constantly. One of the most famous of these villages was excavated in Dolní Vestonice, in south-central Czechoslovakia, and from the surviving remains it is possible to reconstruct an extremely interesting picture of the home life of a person who lived in Europe 27 thousand years ago.

On a grassy hillock with sparsely scattered trees there was a village of five huts, partly surrounded by a simple fence of mammoth bones and tusks dug into the ground, which were then covered with brushwood and turf. One hut stood 80 meters from the others. Four huts, built side by side, rested on slightly inwardly inclined wooden posts, driven into the ground and lined with stones for stability. The walls were made of skins, presumably processed and sewn, stretched over pillars and secured to the ground with stones and heavy bones.

A stream flowed down the slope near the huts, and the earth around was compacted by the feet of people who had lived there for generations. In the open space between the huts there was a large fire burning - perhaps a special fire keeper made sure that it did not go out and threw bones into it. Apparently the fire was kept burning constantly to keep predators away.

Inside the largest hut, about 15 meters long and about 6 meters wide, five shallow hearth pits were discovered in the floor. At one hearth, two long mammoth bones were dug into the ground to support a spit. In this rather cozy environment, it is not difficult to imagine a man sitting on a boulder making tools - the master’s precise movements are deceptively leisurely, each blow of a bone hammer breaks off a thin plate from a cylindrical piece of flint (core). From the far end of the hut comes a clear, ringing sound, like a bird's trill. This woman blew into a hollow bone with two or three holes - after 25 thousand years in Dolni Vestonica they will find what we would now call a whistle.

But the most striking discovery was the remains of a small hut on the hillside away from the rest. The hut was cut into the slope so that it formed its back wall, the side walls were partly made of stones and clay, and the entrance faced towards the base of the hill.

Inside, the visitor would see a fireplace quite different from the fireplaces in the other huts - a clay vault over hot coals. It was a clay kiln - one of the very first such kilns on Earth. Even then, a specially composed clay dough was fired in this oven - not just clay from the bank of a stream, but mixed with crushed bone, so that the heat spread through it evenly, turning the viscous mass into a new material, hard as stone. This is the first example in the history of technology of what was to become a ubiquitous process - the combination and processing of two or more different substances to obtain a new useful material, unlike its components, which later led to the emergence of glass, bronze, steel, nylon and others. countless materials of human use. It would be another 15,000 years before other people living in what is now Japan would learn to turn clay into vessels, but as the findings at Dolni Vestonica show, ceramics had already been invented by this time.

When the hut with the stove was excavated in 1951, it turned out that its sooty floor was strewn with fragments of ceramic figurines. Among them were the heads of animals - bears, foxes, lions. In one especially beautiful lion's head there is a hole simulating a wound - perhaps the figurine was supposed to help some hunter inflict the same wound on a real lion. There were also hundreds of clay pellets with fingerprints of the prehistoric master on the floor (see page 78). Perhaps he removed them from a lump of unfired clay when he began to knead it and give it the desired shape. The arms and legs of human figures and animal limbs lay nearby. Perhaps they fell off during firing, or perhaps the ancient sculptor carelessly discarded figures that did not satisfy him.

But much more interesting and mysterious than all these debris and even the animal figurines on the floor of the hut are the human figurines and especially female figurines found there. Unlike animals, they are not realistic. Their breasts and buttocks are prohibitively large, their arms are very conventional, and their legs converge at a point. Experts have not yet come to a common conclusion regarding these Venuses, as they are called (see pp. 90,95-97). Were they goddesses? hearth and home and pointed legs stuck into the ground so that they stood upright, protecting the house? Were they a symbol of fertility and were their hypertrophied forms supposed to ensure fertility? But be that as it may, they are beautiful, despite their grotesque proportions. They have grace and dignity, and their stylized plasticity makes them similar to some modern sculptures.

And who made them? Was he just a craftsman? Or an artist? Or a shaman? One thing is certain: art and practical work are already inextricably welded together. And this was one of the most brilliant achievements of Cro-Magnon man.

For this era, the most important and characteristic features can be considered the widespread use of prismatic splitting techniques, masterly processing of bone and tusk, and a diverse set of tools - about 200 different types.
Significant changes have occurred in the technique of splitting stone raw materials: the experience of many millennia has led man to the creation prismatic core, from which the workpieces were chipped relative correct form, close to rectangular, with parallel edges. Such a workpiece is called, depending on its size, plate or record, it allowed the most economical use of material and served as a convenient basis for the manufacture of various tools. Irregularly shaped flake blanks were still widespread, but when chipped from prismatic cores they became thinner and very different from flakes from earlier eras. Technique retouching in the Upper Paleolithic it was high and very diverse, which made it possible to create working edges and blades of varying degrees of sharpening, to design different contours and surfaces of products.

Upper Paleolithic tools change their appearance compared to earlier eras: they become smaller and more elegant due to changes in the shapes and sizes of blanks and more advanced retouching techniques. The diversity of stone tools is combined with significantly greater stability of the shapes of the products.

Among the variety of tools, there are groups known from previous eras, but new ones appear and become widespread. In the Upper Paleolithic there are such previously known categories as denticulate tools, side-scrapers, pointed points, scrapers, and burins. The specific weight of some tools increases (incisors, scrapers), others, on the contrary, sharply decreases (scrapers, pointed points), and some disappear completely. Upper Paleolithic tools are more narrowly functional compared to previous eras.

One of the most important and most widespread tools of the Upper Paleolithic was cutter. It was designed for cutting hard materials such as bone, mammoth ivory, wood, and thick leather. Traces of work with a chisel in the form of conical grooves are clearly visible on numerous products and blanks made of horn, tusk and bone from sites in Western and Eastern Europe. However, in the inventory of some archaeological cultures of Siberia and Asia, incisors are absent; apparently, their functions were performed by other tools.

Scrapers in the Upper Paleolithic they were one of the most widespread categories of tools. They were usually made from plates and flakes and had a convex blade processed with a special scraper retouch. The sizes of the tools and the sharpening angle of their blades are very diverse, which is determined by their functional purpose. For many millennia from the Mousterian to the Iron Age, this tool was used for processing hides and leather.

Upper Paleolithic stone tools:
1-3 - microplates with retouching; 4, 5 - scrapers; 6,7 - tips; 8, 9 - points;
10 - prismatic core with a plate chipped from it; 11-13 - incisors;
14, 15 - denticulate tools; 16 - puncture

Scrapers were used to perform one of the main operations - fleshing, i.e. cleaning of hides and skins, without which they could not be used either for sewing clothes and shoes, or for roofing houses and making various containers (bags, sacks, cauldrons, etc.). The wide variety of furs and skins required a corresponding number of necessary tools, which is clearly evident from archaeological materials.

In the Paleolithic, the scraper was most often worked without a handle, with movements “towards oneself”, stretching the skin on the ground and securing it with pegs or spreading it on the knee.

Production and use of Upper Paleolithic flint tools:
1 - splitting of the prismatic core; 2, 3 - work with a cutter;
4-6 - use of end scraper

The working edge of the scrapers quickly wore out, but the length of its workpiece provided the possibility of repeated adjustments. After fleshing and treatment with ash, which contained a lot of potash, the skins and skins were dried, and then kneaded using bone spatulas and polishes, and cut with knives and chisels. Small points and piercings and bone needles were used for sewing leather and fur products. Small points were used to make holes in the leather, and then the cut fragments were sewn together using plant fibers, sinews, thin straps, etc.

Points do not represent a single category; these various tools are united by one common feature - the presence of a sharp, retouched end. Large specimens could be used for hunting weapons as spearheads, darts and arrows, but they could also be used to work with coarse and thick skins of animals such as bison, rhinoceros, bear, wild horse, necessary for the construction of dwellings and for other economic purposes. . Piercings were tools with a distinct retouch, a relatively long and sharp sting or several stings. The stings of these tools were used to pierce the skin, and the holes were then widened using screws or bone awls.

In the second half of the Upper Paleolithic appear composite, or in-ear, guns that were undoubtedly a very important new technological advance. Based on the prismatic splitting technique, man learned to make regular miniature plates, very thin and with cutting edges. This technique is called microlithic. Products whose width did not exceed one centimeter and length - five centimeters are called microplates. A significant number of tools were made from them, mainly micropoints and quadrangular microblades with a blunted edge by retouching. They served inserts- components of the blade of the future product. By inserting retouched microplates into a base of wood, bone or antler, cutting blades of considerable length and varied shapes could be obtained. The base of a complex shape could be cut using cutters from organic materials, which was much more convenient and easier than making such an object entirely from stone. In addition, the stone is quite fragile and with a strong impact the weapon could break. If a composite product breaks down, it was possible to replace only the damaged part of the blade, rather than making it entirely anew; this route was much more economical. This technique was especially widely used in the manufacture of large spearheads with convex edges, daggers, as well as knives with concave blades, which were used by residents of the southern regions when collecting wild cereals.

A characteristic feature of Upper Paleolithic tool sets is a large number of combined tools - i.e. those where two or three working blades were located on one workpiece (flake or plate). It is possible that this was done for convenience and to speed up the work. The most common combinations are scraper and cutter, scraper, cutter and piercing.

In the Upper Paleolithic era, fundamentally new techniques for processing solid materials appeared - drilling, sawing and grinding, however, only drilling was used quite widely.

Drilling was necessary to obtain a variety of holes in tools, decorations and other household items. It was made using a bow drill, well known from ethnographic materials: a hollow bone was inserted into the bowstring, under which sand was constantly poured, and when the bone was rotated, a hole was drilled. When drilling smaller holes, such as the eye of a needle or holes in beads or shells, flint drills were used - small stone tools with a sting highlighted by retouching.

Sawing used mainly for processing soft stones such as marl or slate. The figurines made from these materials show traces of sawing. Stone saws are insert tools; they were made from plates with a retouched jagged edge inserted into a solid base.

Grinding And polishing most often used in bone processing, but occasionally tools are found, mostly massive and apparently related to wood processing, in which the blades are processed by grinding. This technique became more widely used in the Mesolithic and Neolithic.

About eight thousand years ago, people mastered the techniques of sawing, drilling and grinding. These discoveries were so important that they caused a real revolution in the development of society, called the Neolithic revolution. Man learned to saw when he noticed that a serrated knife cuts better than a smooth one. As you know, the action of a saw is based on the fact that its cutters, or teeth, when moving the strip, successively penetrate into the material and remove a layer of a certain depth in it. It turns out like a system of knives. The oldest extant

Our primitive saw was made entirely of flint. Working with it required a lot of physical effort, but it made it possible to successfully cut wood and bone.

Sawing stone took even more time and effort. It developed gradually, but only in the Neolithic era did this technique become widespread. The saw was usually a flint toothed plate, under which quartz sand moistened with water was poured. Sawing was rarely through. Usually the master made only a deep cut, and then with a calculated blow of a wooden mallet he broke the stone into two parts. Thanks to sawing, Sgali people had access to the correct geometric shapes of products, which was very important in the manufacture of tools.

Simultaneously with sawing, technology developed drilling stone This technique was very important in the manufacture of composite instruments. As in the case of sawing, the ancient craftsmen first mastered drilling soft materials. In ancient times, when a person needed to make a hole in a tree or bone, he resorted to knocking out. By rotating a stone punch in a hole, the ancient master discovered that drilling required much less effort. Drilling also had the important advantage that it made it possible to make holes in hard and brittle materials. The first drill, apparently, was an ordinary stick, to the end of which a stone point was attached. The master simply rolled it between his palms. A significant shift in drilling occurred after the bow method was invented in the Neolithic era, in which the rotation of the drill was achieved by turning the bow. With one hand the master shook the bow, and with the other he pressed the drill from above. Then the stone drill began to be replaced with a hollow animal bone of large diameter. Quartz sand was poured inside it, acting as an abrasive. This was a fundamental and very important improvement, which significantly expanded the drilling capabilities. During the work, sand gradually spilled out of the drill cavity under the edges of the crown and slowly abraded the stone being drilled. Since the success of drilling largely depended on the force of pressure, artificial weights were later used.

When sawing and drilling was completed grinding , ancient man has completely mastered the entire technology of stone processing . From now on, nothing was impossible for him - he could give the product any desired shape, and at the same time, the edges of the stone always remained smooth and even.

Stone processing technology includes the following stages: primary processing of raw materials and production of blanks, production finished products, their texture processing and mounting.

Primary processing of raw materials involves sorting the stone in such a way as to obtain the appropriate blanks with the least amount of time.

The most labor-intensive process in the production of stone art products and souvenirs is carving, done by hand. The stone carving process includes two stages: preparatory and final. Preparatory operations - marking. peeling and filing of workpieces is usually performed using a mechanized method. The final operation is to give a given product model a certain artistic form. The master reproduces a model or design of a product using chisels of various shapes and sizes, bow and bastard saws, rasps, files and a hand drill.

Next comes the texture treatment of the surface of the products: grinding and polishing. During the grinding process, the surface of the product is cleaned of streaks and small irregularities. When polishing the surface, it is given mirror shine. As a result of these operations, the natural pattern and color of the stone are better revealed. Grinding and polishing are carried out on a grinding wheel covered with calico cloth. When polishing plastic products, wooden discs are sometimes used, the working part of which is covered with sheepskin. To speed up the polishing process, the surface of the product is moistened with a soap solution. For polishing artistic products and souvenirs, horsetail or washed quartz sand is used; for polishing, fluff lime, powdered chalk or aluminum oxide are used. In hard-to-reach places, grinding and polishing is carried out manually. The texture treatment of the products is completed by covering their surface with a protective film of paraffin. Products are wiped with paraffin heated to 50 - 60°C. As a result of paraffin, the shine of the surface of stone-cutting products increases. and the natural pattern and color of the stone are revealed more clearly. In addition, paraffin protects products from contamination and moisture penetration into the pores.

A significant difference between stone grinding and other processing methods was that it was possible to remove magerial in very small and even layers, and simultaneously from the entire surface of the workpiece. Thanks to this, it became possible to create tools of regular geometric shapes with a smooth surface. Grinding made it possible to process material of any shape, structure and hardness.

The Art of Polishing reached such a height that in some places the production of stone mirrors was practiced, quite suitable for use (in Hawaii, such mirrors were made from basalt, in pre-Columbian Mexico - from obsidian).

Grinding and polishing were the last links in a long chain of stone processing history. New processing techniques have allowed man to master harder rocks: jade, jadeite, jasper, basalt, diorite, etc. These materials were more suitable for making tools that used impact force (such as axes) than brittle flint. In addition, flint was completely unsuitable for drilling and was difficult to polish.

Main:

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2. Folk arts and crafts. Under general ed. Popova O.S. – M.: Light and food industry, 1984.

3. Bardina R. A. Products of folk art crafts and souvenirs. – M.: Higher School, 1990.

4. Popova V. F. Kaplan N. I. Russian artistic crafts. – M., 1984.

5. Baradulin V.A. Koromyslov B.I. Maksimov Yu.V. et al.; Ed. Baradulina V. A. Fundamentals of artistic craft. Painting on varnishes. Wood carving and painting. Artistic processing bone, horn and metal. Ceramic toy. – M.: Education, 1979. – 320 pp., 16 sheets. ill.

6. Semenova M. We are Slavs!: Popular encyclopedia. – St. Petersburg: Publishing House

7. Fedotov G. Ya. Encyclopedia of Crafts - M.: Eksmo Publishing House, 2003. – 608.: ill.

8. Folk arts and crafts of Russia. Compiler of the album Utkin. P.I. - M.: Publishing house "Soviet Russia", 1984. - 230 pp., ill.

Fersman A.E. From the history of stone culture in Russia - Leningrad: Publishing House of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1946.
Baldina O.D., Kaplan N.I., Skavronskaya Z.S., Utkin P.I. Arts and Crafts

RSFSR - M.: "Higher School" - 1986.

11. Large illustrated encyclopedia of antiquities. Translation into Russian by B. B. Mikhailov. – Prague: Artia Publishing House, 1980.

Additional:

1. 1. Rafaenko V. Ya. Folk arts and crafts. – M.: Knowledge, 1988.

2. Milovsky A. S. Folk crafts. Meeting with original masters. - M., 1994.

3. Nikonenko N. M. Decorative – applied creativity. Interior decoration. Practical guide for adults and children (School of Joy Series) - Rostov / D.: Phoenix, 2003. - 128 pp.: ill.

Questions for self-control

Page 1 of 8

SECTION 1. From the history of stone processing

The role of stone in the development of primitive man

The mystery of the beauty of stone has excited man since ancient times. It is not for nothing that the stone is considered a symbol of eternity. It was he who brought to this day the immortal creations of man imprinted in him. The discoveries of archaeologists make it possible to learn more and more about the history of mankind and the development of life on earth.

For primitive man, stone turned out to be the most reliable, durable and durable material. An entire era in human history is called the Stone Age, which is divided into three periods: Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic.

Round-shaped stones (ordinary pebbles), after chipping and rough upholstery by ancient people, turned into simple tools in the form of knives, scrapers, and choppers. What was important was not the shape, size or weight of the pebble, but the hardness and strength of the stone itself. The most suitable were flattened pebbles made of diorite, quartz and silicon. The pebbles were beaten directly on the spot with several blows until they were given the required shape. This is how the first stone processing technology was born. In the struggle for the quality of the resulting products, production technology was improved and new operations were introduced. Thus, to make hand axes of low quality, 10-30 blows were required, and of a higher quality – 50-80 or more blows. When polishing an ax, the Neolithic master made 50 thousand movements of the stone on the abrasive material in 8-10 hours of work. Archeology has long identified a special “pebble” culture, one of the most ancient in the development of mankind.

Traces left on the stone are being studied by a new direction in archaeological science - transology. Stone processing technologies are different: chipping, retouching, drilling, splitting, sawing, turning. It must be assumed that the same people involved in the manufacture of stone tools combined two professions - prospecting geologist and stone cutter.

Subsequently, chipping and splitting technologies found wider use, and the best materials for this turned out to be flint and volcanic glass - obsidian. These stones, having a relatively high hardness, have the ability, when split, to form narrow and thin plates with sharp cutting edges, which can hold such an “edge” for some time.

In addition to these stones, quartzite, petrified wood, siliceous tuff, clay and calcareous shales, granites, fine-grained sandstones and other rocks that are easily processed by impact methods have similar properties. Other stones, such as jade, although strong, are difficult to work with blows due to their viscosity.

The splitting process is reminiscent of chopping firewood, when logs break off from a round cut of a tree. When splitting stone blanks, it was necessary to know in detail the methods of work being performed (size of the stone, direction and force of impact). Therefore, the manufacture of flint tools is an art multiplied by strength, dexterity and precise calculation of the blow.

The objects found by archaeologists can be attributed to jewelry, since it is difficult to imagine how it was possible to make plates 55 mm long, 5 mm wide and 1 mm thick at that time! In archeology, this finishing of stone plates

received the name retouching (from the French word “retouche” - to correct).

Retouching the blades made it possible to make the cutting edges not smooth, but jagged. Such tools were more effective. It is generally accepted that stone age Primitive stone processing is characteristic, however, in fact, Stone Age craftsmen possessed advanced technologies, such as grinding, polishing and turning.

Since ancient times, the feeling of beauty has been inherent in the soul of primitive man - the artist. One has to wonder how at that time they could drill small holes in stone, the thickness of a needle, with a length tens of times greater than its diameter. Moreover, holes were drilled not only in soft rocks, but also in hard rocks, such as jasper, agate, and chalcedony. It is possible that corundum or even diamond was used as a drill tip.

The ancestor of the drilling tool was a T-shaped device reminiscent of a modern ax with a stone tip. The hole was “checked” with this tool, and sand was added to speed up the work. You had to press and turn the tool by hand. Subsequently, the tool was improved and took the form of a brace, the work of which is performed with two hands: with one hand the tool is rotated, and with the other it is pressed. The rotator has a clamping device (chuck), with which you can secure replaceable drills. Modern masters also use the rotary with some improvements. With a T-shaped tool in the form of an ax, rotational movements were made in both directions, and with a brace only in one direction, which made it possible to increase labor productivity. The rotator became the prototype of the modern drilling machine. Quartz sand is currently used as a free abrasive: emery and corundum. In terms of abrasive properties, emery is 3-5 times more effective than quartz. Productivity increases significantly if the sand is constantly moistened with water.

In order to cut stone tiles, the cut was not made completely, but only partially, and then it was broken. For insurance, stone processors made cuts on both sides.

Sanding and polishing stone surfaces requires more time compared to sawing and drilling. At first these operations were performed using the dry method. The use of wet grinding speeded up the work by 2-3 times. Such processes made it possible to produce parts with regular geometric shapes and sharp edges.

Experience in stone processing accumulated slowly. People learned to polish stone ten thousand years after rough processing. As a rule, two slabs were polished at once, placing one on top of the other. Pumice and crushed chalk were used as powder. The grinding surfaces were smooth sections of rock or flat stone, from which all irregularities were removed using the point picket method.

The first mirrors appeared thanks to the high quality of polishing pieces of obsidian and basalt. To improve reflectivity, they were wetted with water. When polishing mirror surfaces, soft materials and leather were used.

The point picketing method has evolved into a separate stone processing technology. By frequent blows on a round, pointed rod made of strong material, you can punch a hole, level the surface, and apply a textured design or letters to the polished surface. Simple stone bowls, mortars, and lamps were made using the same method. The picketing method can be used both in the production of small plastic sculptures and in the production of large sculptures. The famous gigantic idols of Easter Island are carved from volcanic tuff and other rocks without the use of metal using the point picket method using basalt scarpels. Zakolniki, scarpels, bushchards (tools for masonry work) were originally made from hard stone, varying in shape and weight: from a few tens of grams to 5-6 kilograms.

Historical research in science and technology helps us more fully imagine the evolution of the development of technological processes for processing materials, including various types of stone. In the Stone Age, the range of manufactured stone products reached the highest level, but with the advent of the Bronze Age, and then the Iron Age, a significant part of stone products began to be made from metal. With the advent of the atomic-space, electronic-cybernetic age, the stone did not lose its significance. Modern technologies make it possible to find new uses for it. Now these are both super-hard productive tools and beautiful Jewelry, and an irreplaceable durable building and facing material. Artists use stone to create beautiful objects of decorative and applied art in combination with various materials.

Ideal cosmetics. Makeup. Manicure. Oils. Massage. Coloring

The technique of stone processing first appeared in A brief historical sketch of stone processing technology. The emergence and spread of bows and arrows and other types of throwing weapons

Olduvai era (3 million - 800 thousand years ago)

Stone tools and techniques for their production