This is a story of people who lived in caves, hundreds of thousands of years ago. Who were the cave men? How did they live? What skills did they have?

Sam and Beryl Epstein tell about the Peking Men, who lived in caves in North China about 400,000 years ago; the Neanderthal cave dwellers, who hunted giant mammoths and may have worshiped bears; and the handsome, clever Cro-Magnons, who killed reindeer for meat and clothing and carved pictures on reindeer antlers.

Not all prehistoric men lives in caves, but many used them as ready-made shelters. One cave was inhabited over thousands of years by twelve groups of cave men. Modern archaeologists known something about each group from the rubbish that the cave men left behind.

The authors tell how a 5-year-old girl found beautiful prehistoric paintings, deep in a Spanish cave. We read how four teen-agers discovered the greatest collection of prehistoric paintings yet known to the world.

This is the exciting scientific story of men who lived in the dawn of time -- and of the remarkable discoveries made in recent years by professional and amateur archaeologists.

-- From the book.