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

This volume is the outcome of an ever-memorable tour through the country of the men of the Old Stone Age, guided by three of the distinguished archæologists of France, to whom the work is gratefully dedicated. This Palæolithic tour[A] of three weeks, accompanied as it was by a constant flow of conversation and discussion, made a very profound impression, namely, of the very early evolution of the spirit of man, of the close relation between early human environment and industry and the development of mind, of the remote antiquity of the human powers of observation, of discovery, and of invention. It appears that men with faculties and powers like our own, but in the infancy of education and tradition, were living in this region of Europe at least 25,000 years ago. Back of these intelligent races were others, also of eastern origin but in earlier stages of mental development, all pointing to the very remote ancestry of man from earlier mental and physical stages.