The Lost Civilizations of the Stone Age

A British scholar challenges the conventional view of the Stone Age as minimally civilized, pointing out the many advances of its peoples, from their maps of the constellations to their innovations in boat building

Ever wonder what it was like to be a caveman? Whether you are a dentist, sculptor or accountant, you may have more in common with our Stone Age ancestors than you think. Rudgley, a scholar of Stone Age art, religion and technology at Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, takes issue with the standard descriptions of the origins of civilization, arguing that prehistoric peoples were far more accomplished than they are generally thought to have been. Although the title evokes science fiction, Rudgley's analysis elucidates the differences among numerous academic theories on topics as diverse as Venus figurines, Neolithic chewing gum and 300,000-year-old bone markings. Rudgley reinterprets these findings in order to paint a picture of Stone Age culture that rightly deserves to be called "civilization," even though conventional scholarship says that writing and, with it, civilization arose "suddenly" in the Near East around 3000 B.C. and that other written languages were derived from this first script. But Rudgley provides evidence of earlier sign systems, what Marija Gimbutas calls the "alphabet of the metaphysical," that developed independently at sites such as Transylvania, where tablets have been dated to about 4000 B.C. Historical linguists have reconstructed compelling precedents to these written systems, which, when combined with work by archeologists and other scientists, suggest the need to revise our present definition of civilization. Photos not seen by PW. Illustrations. (Feb.) FYI: Rudgley won a British Museum Award for his last book, Essential Substances.
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A powerful but polemical tract on behalf of prehistoric culture, intended to show the importance and relatively advanced nature of Stone Age civilization. Rudgley (Stone Age Studies/Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford Univ.) points out that although 95 percent of humanitys time on the planet preceded the dawn of history, prehistory has received 5 percent (or less) of scholarly attention. Here he sets about to rectify things. The author demonstrates at length that the rudiments of civilization, ranging from astronomy, mathematics, and art to pottery, dentistry, and accounting, originated in Neolithic cultures. Writing might be thought of as a unique innovation of civilizationsindeed, history may have begun when people first recorded events in writingbut Rudgley instead argues that proto-hieroglyphics may have existed in Egypt and that Chinese and other writing systems may also be vastly older than has been believed. And he argues, too, that prehistoric beings pioneered both visual art and science. The author's review of prehistoric cultural achievements is erudite and fascinating, especially his discussions of Stone Age language, technology, mining, and religious art. By necessity, his reasoning is sometimes speculative (e.g., he cites the possible existence of Paleolithic science and mathematics from the slenderest of archaeological evidence). Other claims, such as his assertion that an archaic progenitor language existed in prehistory, do not appear to advance his argument for the superiority of prehistoric culture. With some contempt, he decries the myopic attitudes of anthropologists and other social scientists who have disparaged Stone Age cultures as primitive. Rudgley's argument on prehistorys behalf is often forceful. But he's too quick to attribute 20th-century ignorance of the Stone Ages significance to our modern prejudices, when the more persuasive cause may be prehistory's scanty written records and archaeological legacy. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.