t rudimentary way. Artistic skill, the
use of clothing and fire, and a finer feeling in the shaping of weapons
and implements, are the highest certain indications of the progress made
by the end of the Old Stone Age.

But there was probably an advance made which we do not find recorded,
or only equivocally recorded, in the memorials of the age. Speech was
probably the greatest invention of Magdalenian man. It has been pointed
out that the spine in the lower jaw, to which the tongue-muscle is
attached, is so poorly developed in Palaeolithic man that we may
infer from it the absence of articulate speech. The deduction has been
criticised, but a comparison of the Palaeolithic jaw with that of the
ape on one hand and modern man on the other gives weight to it. Whatever
may have been earlier man's power of expression, the closer social life
of the Magdalenian period would lead to a great development of it. Some
writers go so far as to suggest that certain obscure marks painted
on pebbles or drawn on the cavern-walls by men at the close of the
Palaeolithic Age may represent a beginning of written language, or
numbers, or conventional signs. The interpretation of these is obscure
and doubtful. It is not until ages afterwards that we find the first
clear traces of written language, and then they take the form of
pictographs (like the Egyptian hieroglyphics or the earliest Chinese
characters).

We cannot doubt, however, that articulate speech would be rapidly
evolved in the social life of the later Magdalenian period, and the
importance of this acquisition can hardly be exaggerated. Imagine even a
modern community without the device of articulate language. A very large
proportion of the community, who are now maintained at a certain level
by the thought of others, communicated to them by speech, would sink
below the civilised standard, and the transmission and improvement of
ideas would be paralysed. It would not be paradoxical to regard the
social life and developing speech of Magdalenian man as the chief cause
of the rapid advance toward civilisation which will follow in the next
period.

And it is not without interest to notice that a fall in the temperature
of the earth is the immediate cause of this social life. The building
of homes of any kind seems to be unknown to Magdalenian man. The artist
would have left us some sketchy representation of it if there had been
anything in the nature of a tent in his surroundings. Th