We excavated many stone tools through archaeology (France has the most archaeological excavation activities). The excavated stone tools show how stone age hunters continued to evolve for hundreds of thousands of years after they learned to make stone tools. By studying the stone tools collected in European and American museums, we can find out how early humans gradually evolved from cutting rough stone tools to making perfect stone tools. The most representative stone tool is the "fist axe", which was used in all activities at that time.
The "fist axe" is 8 inches to 10 inch long, with a wide bottom and a narrow top and a sharp blade. It can easily cut off broken branches, make a device to drill wood for fire, and also make wooden sticks. It was called "fist axe" mainly because hunters often held its narrow end at that time because they could not install the handle. This kind of "fist axe" is found in Europe and other places outside Europe. It can be said that this is the earliest human-made stone tool we have discovered so far.
The earliest and most perfect stone tool of mankind-fist axe. Both ends of the boxing axe can be used as sharp edges, but the narrower end is usually held by hand. The earliest fist axe had no handle, and then it began to appear with wooden handle and horn handle. Some boxing axes can also find traces of wear and use.
The life of prehistoric primitive people in Europe is extremely unstable, full of crises everywhere, and they live a precarious life. Some people die because of this, while others continue to live forever. They constantly sum up experience in their life and work, improve their fists and axes and make them more useful. We can be sure that they also used some wooden tools, but wooden tools are perishable, so we can't be sure. They never had what future generations of human beings had. Now, we can make predictions about the future, but humans at that time could not do this.
They are separated from Europe with prosperous cities and vast farmland by tens of thousands of years. Almost all wild animals are enemies of primitive people, and primitive people gradually developed from fighting with these wild animals with bare hands to fighting with wild animals with stone tools. At that time, there were no sheep and poultry and no dogs to pet. Domestication technology appeared later than that time. The jackals in the primeval forest may be the ancestors of domestic dogs today. Perhaps, the ancestors of modern poultry have already disappeared in Europe and other regions, or they still haunt the forest forever in the form of wild horses.
People noticed that in the late Stone Age, the forests on which people lived began to lose the protection of the warm tropical climate, and even today's scientists could not explain why the tropical climate was getting colder. Glaciers keep moving south. The peaks of the Alps and the Arctic are still covered with snow all year round.
At that time, the southward Arctic glaciers gradually covered England and even covered the south of the Thames. The glaciers in the Alps go all the way south along the Rhone Valley until now Lyon, France. Glaciers in southern North America are based on the lines of boulders, which we are familiar with today. Driven by glaciers, the gravel moraine began to move south, forming the gravel moraine line we see now. You can see this on Long Island in the south and gravel in the west can be seen in the valleys of Ohio and Missouri.
In history, glaciers moved south four times and north four times, that is, there were four cold periods. Every cold period is followed by a longer warm period. But the time and intensity of each glacier are very different. The wavy lines in the picture show the periodic alternation of cold and warm. Now we are in the fourth warm period.
Not long ago, some very rough stone tools were found in England, and the people who made them were probably before the Ice Age. This shows that humans appeared before the Ice Age-at least 500,000 years ago. At the same time, we can also know that the perfection of stone tools is gradually realized. The most representative stone is flint, which is called "Paleolithic Stone". However, there are still different views on whether paleolithic can be called human handiwork.
However, it is obvious that the fist axe appeared in a warm period. Some people think it was the second warm period at least 200,000 years ago. At the same time, many archaeologists believe that it appeared in the third warm period from about 65438+0.25 billion BC to 50 thousand years ago. However, the development history of human handicraft industry can be traced back to the discovery of fist axe. Hunters of that era witnessed the spectacular sight of glaciers moving south. The vast virgin forest where they lived was crossed by snow and glaciers, and the towering trees in river valleys and on the ground were ruthlessly washed down, and most animals fled to warm places in the south. But stone age hunters did not leave this land, and the cold climate gradually adapted.
There is no doubt that they have withstood the test of glaciers again and again. The end of the early stone age is the arrival of the third ice age. The bones of wild animals killed by hunters and rough axes were abandoned in the gravel of the valley. Now, before the riverbeds in France and South England were eroded by prehistoric glaciers, there were still gurgling rivers.
Conclusion: Now, the objects left here in prehistoric times are still telling us a magical story of early humans-the story of their transformation of the world around them.