The prehistoric man had to keep warm when the Ice Age began to grip the world and the great ice sheets formed large regions of Europe and Asia. During the Paleolithic or the Old Stone Age there were major changes in the climate of the world, which led to glaciations. This word gives us an idea of what happened. Huge, thick rivers of ice came down from the mountains and thrust their way into valleys. The ice moved south-wards to zones which normally had a mild climate. The last of the great Ice Ages occurred when the first men appeared on the planet.

One of the major problems these primitive people had to face was the bitter cold in addition to the daily task of finding food. It was by hunting for his food that man protected himself against the cold for often the animals which he killed had soft, warm fur. The most common animals of the time were the wild horses and cattle, elephants, rhinoceroses, mammoth. There were also several kinds of cat, some of them of lion size.

Unfortunately the skins of these animals soon went bad and lost their fur. Man then learned that to make the skins last he had to scrape them very carefully and tan them.

The tools of this period include stone axes and flints. The flints were used, among other things, to scrape the skins and were among the highly valued tools of any early family.