"In this book, Rudgley describes how the intrepid explorers of the Stone Age discovered all of the world's major land masses long before the so-called Age of Discovery. Stone Age man made precisely sized tools, and used proto-abacuses to count and measure. He performed medical operations including amputations and delicate cranial surgeries. Neanderthals not only domesticated fire for heat and light, but experimented with lichen and moss fuels. In the visual arts, the Paleolithic cave artists of western Europe used techniques forgotten until the Renaissance. Picasso himself is said to have remarked after visiting Lascaux, "We have invented nothing!"" "The Lost Civilizations of the Stone Age shows the greatness of the debt that contemporary society owes to its prehistoric predecessors. It is a rich introduction to a lost world that will redefine the meaning of civilization itself."--BOOK JACKET.