ITALY

The Italian Peninsula was the home of human groups from the Lower Palaeolithic onward. During the Quaternary geological period, changes in sea level exposed now more, now less of the low-lying parts of Italy but this had very little effect on the earliest inhabitants. Their area of occupation was in any case limited to the limestone masses of the Apennines, which furnished them with suitable firm terrain, caves to live in, and a supply of flint and chert. The active vulcanicity of certain areas and the glaciers which covered the higher slopes during the cold phases probably affected them much more. The earliest deposits contain handaxes of Abbevillian type, which in time gradually developed into the more refined Acheulean ones. The latest of these are found associated with types proper to the Middle Palaeolithic Mousterian industry, which flourished long in Italy. This industry is associated with the Neanderthal physical type, of which remains have been found at the caves of Saccopastore and Monte Circeo.

The cultures of the Upper Palaeolithic, which were created by men of modern type who had a much more varied and specialized tool-kit than their predecessors though their economy remained a hunting and gathering one, are well represented in Italy. The flint industry is usually a variant of the Perigordian of France, often called Grimaldian in its late stages. Important evidence for this period has been found in the caves of Liguria, particularly those of Grimaldi, with their ceremonial burials of men and women, and in the Grotta Romanelli in the extreme south-east, where artistic representations of animals, related to those of the ‘Franco-Cantabrian’ groups of France and Spain, though less accomplished, have been found engraved on the walls and on loose blocks, along with abstract geometric patterns, and what perhaps are stylized human beings.