In southern France and northern Spain there are many caves. During the last part of the
great Ice Age many of these caves were used as homes by the people who lived in Europe in those days. These people we now call the cave men.
Several times during the Ice Age great sheets of ice pushed down from the north and then melted back. Scientists have discovered that there were people in Europe some 100,000 years ago, before the last great push of ice from the north. These people left many signs behind them.
As the ice pushed southward the climate grew colder and colder. The people had been living in the open. Perhaps they had simple shelters made of tree branches. But because of the cold they needed better shelters. They moved into the caves.
To live in the caves themselves they had to drive out giant cave bears and many other animals. They were able to drive out these animals partly because they knew how to make fire. A flaming torch was a very good weapon against an animal. Besides, they had weapons made of stone— stone axes and stone knives.
The early cave men had only one way of getting food—hunting. When they killed an animal, they brought it to the cave and cooked it. The bones they threw aside. When there were too many ashes around the fire, they pushed these aside, too, and covered up the bones. Once in a while a cave man lost one of his stone tools in the ashes. Scientists have been able to find out a great deal about the cave men by digging through the ashes left in the caves.
After the early cave men had lived in the caves for thousands of years, the ice began to melt back. Then a new people pushed into Europe from the south.
These later cave men were tall and strong. They were much more like the people of today. They had good brains—at least we can guess that they had from the size and shape of their skulls. They made some weapons of bone, but they still made most of their weapons of stone. They, too, got their food by hunting. They had not learned to tame any animals or grow plants. They did not make pottery. Their only clothing was made from animal skins.
But in one way they were far ahead of the early cave men. They drew excellent colored pictures of animals on the walls of their caves. Many of the pictures show animals which have not been in the region for a very long time. Among these animals are mammoths and bison.
To get to some of the rooms where the pictures are, one has to crawl through narrow passageways. Many of the pictures are on the ceilings.
The caves are so dark that the cave men must have had lights of some kind. Perhaps they burned dry moss or sticks.
These cave men also made models of animals. Some of them are so good that an artist of today would be proud to have made them. The handles of many bone tools were carved into animal shapes.
The time in which the cave men lived is often called the Old Stone Age. It is named from the crude stone weapons the cave men used. The Old Stone Age in Europe ended more than 8,000 years ago.
With the retreat of the ice, people could work out better ways of living. Other people moved into Europe and mingled with the cave dwellers. Better tools were developed, and homes more comfortable than caves were built. The New Stone Age began.
