Men of the Old Stone Age: Their Environment, Life and Art

Name: Men of the Old Stone Age: Their Environment, Life and Art
Author: Henry Fairfield Osborn

Henry Fairfield Osborn

A general reader's introduction to Palaeolithic Europe that argues cave art like Altamira proves ice-age hunters had a fully modern capacity for symbolic thought, not just tool use.

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Where it is now wrong

Osborn arranged the Palaeolithic into a racial hierarchy and spent much of his career promoting eugenics; that framework runs through the book rather than sitting beside it. The excavation records it compiles remain useful. Its interpretation of them does not.

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Filed under Prehistoric Archaeology in Archaeology.