PALAEOLITHIC (Gr. iraXates, old, and )tWBor,

See also:

• STONE
• STONE (0. Eng. shin; the word is common to Teutonic languages, cf. Ger. Stein, Du. steen, Dan. and Swed. sten; the root is also seen in Gr. aria, pebble)
• STONE, CHARLES POMEROY (1824-1887)
• STONE, EDWARD JAMES (1831-1897)
• STONE, FRANK (1800-1859)
• STONE, GEORGE (1708—1764)
• STONE, LUCY [BLACKWELL] (1818-1893)
• STONE, MARCUS (184o— )
• STONE, NICHOLAS (1586-1647)

stone)  , in anthropology, the characteristic epithet of the Drift or early Stone Age when Man shared the possession of Europe with the mammoth, the cave-bear, the woolly-haired rhinoceros and other extinctanimals . The epoch is characterized by flint implements of the rudest type and never polished . The fully authenticated remains of palaeolithic man are few, and discoveries are confined to certain areas, e.g . France and north Italy . The reason is that interment appears not to have been practised by the river-drift hunters, and the only bones likely to be found would be those accidentally preserved in caves or rock-shelters . The first actual find of a palaeolithic implement was that of a rudely fashioned flint in a sandbank at Menchecourt in 1841 by Boucher de Perthes . Further discoveries have resulted in the division of the Palaeolithic Age into various epochs or sequences according to the faunas associated with the implements or the localities where found . One classification makes three divisions for the epoch, characterized respectively by the existence of the cave-bear, the mammoth and reindeer; another, two, marked by the prevalence of the mammoth and reindeer respectively . These divisions are, however, unsatisfactory, as the fauna relied on as characteristic must have existed synchronously . The four epochs or culture-sequences of G. de Mortillet have met with the most general acceptance . They are called from the places in France where the most typical finds of palaeolithic remains have been made—Chellian from Chelles, a few miles east of Paris; Mousterian from the cave of Moustier on the river Vezere, Dordogne; Solutrian from the cave at Solutre near Macon; and Madelenian from the rocky shelter of La Madeleine, Dordogne .