In this lavishly illustrated book Richard Rudgley gives a lively account of his journey across the continents and back through time in search of the lost legacy of prehistoric man. The popular view of Stone Age Man as a primitive and ignorant forerunner of ourselves is shattered as the author reveals, step by step, the myriad and remarkable accomplishments mdade before the dawn of history. His journey begins in ancient Egypt, where excavations at Abydos have unearthed hieroglyphs belonging to an age before the pharaohs, which Egtypologists have begun calling Dynasty O; to stone circles and burial chambers in Ireland which carbon dating prove to precede Stonehenge by two millennia; to the world's first town, 9, 000 year old Catal Huyuk in Turkey; to startling new research on the body of the Ice Man, the 5, 300 year old mummy found a few years ago in an Alpine glacier which reveals that acupuncture was practised in Stone Age Europe; 11, 000 year old writing unearthed on the banks of the Euphrates, the awe-inspiring cave paintings of Ice Age Europe, and finally to Indonesia where the discovery of the Euphrates; the awe inspiring cave paintings of Ice Age France; and finally to Indonesia where the discovery of stone tools that pre-Neanderhal man undertook voyages on rafts across the sea an incredible 700, 000 years.