The Lost Civilizations of the Stone Age

An authoritative, eye-opening look at Stone Age civilizations that explodes traditional portrayals of prehistoryThe rise of historical civilization 5,000 years ago is often depicted as if those societies were somehow created out of nothing. However, recent discoveries of astonishing accomplishments from the Neolithic Age -- in art, technology, writing, math, science, religion, medicine and exploration -- demand a fundamental rethinking of humanity before the dawn of written history.In this fascinating book, Richard Rudgley describes how* The intrepid explorers of the Stone Age discovered all of the world's major land masses long before the so-called Age of Discovery* Stone Age man performed medical operations, including amputations and delicate cranial surgeries* Paleolithic cave artists of Western Europe used techniques that were forgotten until the Renaissance* Prehistoric life expectancy was better than it is for contemporary third-world populationsRudgley reminds us just how savage so-called civilized people can be, and demonstrates how the cultures that have been reviled as savage were truly civilized.The Lost Civilizations of the Stone Ageshows the great debt that contemporary society owes to its prehistoric predecessors. It is a rich introduction to a lost world that will redefine the meaning of civilization itself.

Richard Rudgley is an Oxford-trained scholar of Stone Age art, religion and technology. He is also the author of Essential Substances: A Cultural History of Intoxicants in Society (for which he won the British Museum Prometheus Award) and The Encyclopaedia of Psychoactive Substances and the editor of Wildest Dreams: An Anthology of Drug-Related Literature. He lives with his wife and two children in Notting Hill, London.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

0. The Stone Age
1. The Mother Tongue
2. A New Rosetta Stone
3. The Signs of Old Europe: Writing or Pre-Writing?
4. The Paleolithic Origins of Writing
5. Paleoscience
6. From Footprints to Fingerprints
7. Under the Knife
8. Stone Age Surgery
9. Pyrotechnology
10. Back to the Grindstone
11. The Stone Age Mining Industry
12. Ochre: Blood of the Earth
13. Venus Figurines: Sex Objects or Symbols?
14. The Song of the Stalactites
15. The First Fossil Hunters
16. The Four Bones of Bilzingsleben
17. Graven Images from the Holy Land
18. Dawn Stones or False Dawn?

Afterword
Bibliography
List of Plates
List of Figures
Picture Acknowledgments
Index