Mists of Dawn (4 page)

In
general,
we
know
almost
the
same
things
about the
Cro-Magnons
that
we
know
about
the
Neanderthals.
That
is,
we
have
their
skeletons,
their
artifacts, and
so
forth.
In
addition,
we
have
their
paintings
on the
cave
walls
of
southern
France
and
northern
Spain, the
first
great
art
produced
by
mankind.
They
were
a gifted
people,
both
physically
and
mentally,
and
they lived
as
hunters
on
the
plains
of
the
late
Pleistocene,
or Ice
Age.

All
this
is
of
necessity
very
general,
and
suppose
we now
get
down
to
brass
tacks
about
the
extrapolations in
this
book.
This
is
a
work
of
fiction,
and
does
not claim
to
be
anything
else.
However,
I
submit
that
the picture
you
will
find
here
of
Cro-Magnon
man
is
not a
fantastic
one
and
is
based
on
reasonable
conjecture. Here
are
a
few
examples:

Language.
There
is
no
book
that
you
can
go
to
that will
tell
you
anything
about
the
language
of
the
Cro-Magnons;
they
had
no
writing,
and
the
spoken
word does
not
last
long.
They
had
a
language,
of
course,
and probably
a
rather
advanced
one,
but
of
what
it
may have
consisted
we
do
not
know.
Your
guess,
or
mine, is
as
apt
to
be
correct
as
any
other.
In
naming
the
Cro-Magnons,
I
have
simply
tried
to
steer
clear
of
the annoying
“Ughs”
and
“Mo-Ros”
that
so
often
clutter up
stories
of
this
sort.
There
is
absolutely
no
reason to
suppose
that
Cro-Magnon
names
were
on
the
level of
animal
grunts.

Social
organization.
Just
as
in
the
case
of
language, you
cannot
tell
much
about
how
a
society
was
put
together
only
by
looking
at
a
few
bones.
We
do
know, however,
that
the
Cro-Magnons
had
a
hunting
economy.
Therefore,
I
have
pictured
a
social
organization that
fits
in
with
what
we
know
about
other
primitive hunting
groups,
such
as
the
Plains
Indians
of
our
own country.
That,
incidentally,
is
the
reason
for
the
introduction
of
lean-tos
into
Cro-Magnon
times.
No
such structures
have
survived,
although
certain
house-drawings
have
been
found
on
cave
walls,
but
they probably
existed.
Hunting
peoples
must
follow
their game
supply—any
hunter
knows
that
he
cannot
simply sit
in
one
spot
forever
and
kill
enough
game
to
live
on. Caves
are
not
portable,
and
just
as
the
Plains
Indians had
their
tipis,
and
the
Eskimos
their
snow
houses while
on
the
trail,
the
Cro-Magnons
must
have
had some
similar
shelter
that
they
could
carry
with
them.

Songs.
Men
everywhere
have
music
and
song,
and I
have
given
the
Cro-Magnons
a
song
to
sing.
We
are prone
to
think
of
primitive
peoples
as
somehow
lacking
in
human
values
like
laughter
and
song,
but
such is
demonstrably
not
the
case.
I
don’t
know
any
Cro-Magnon
songs,
and
neither
does
anyone
else.
So
I
have invented
one—but
in
so
doing
I
have
not
just
spun
one out
of
the
air,
so
to
speak,
but
have
instead
reworked portions
of
an
Indian
prayer
and
a
primitive
chant
into what
I
hope
is
a
meaningful
song.
It
is
not
suggested that
this
is
a
Cro-Magnon
song,
but
simply
that
it might
have
been
something
like
this.