The Stone Age

This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design. The Stone Age begins by turning earth itself into evidence, showing how an ordinary pebble can preserve the story of fire, water, ice, and human hands. From that starting point, it places humanity on the immense scale of geologic time and follows the recent past through the Ice Age, where rock layers, terraces, loess, and fossil remains help scientists divide glacial and interglacial periods. Against this backdrop, the book traces the rise of early humans from ape-men to Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons, stressing that prehistoric people lived among mammoths, sabre-tooth tigers, and other Ice Age animals, not dinosaurs. Because bones are rare and fragile, stone tools become the clearest record of progress, leading the reader through the Eolithic, Paleolithic, Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron Ages. Landmark discoveries in Java, Heidelberg, Piltdown, Krapina, Gibraltar, Spy, La Chapelle-aux-Saints, and Jersey reveal a long, uncertain evolution: upright walkers with growing brains, early fire use, increasingly skilled toolmaking, burial customs, and the emergence of the Neanderthal race as a dominant force in western Europe.