Part 5 (1/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 8.--_Dendrites_ or Crystallisations found on the surface of wrought Flints.]
The ancient flints present a gla.s.sy surface which singularly contrasts with the dull appearance of the fresh cleavages. They are also for the most part covered with a whitish coating or _patina_, which is nothing but a thin layer of carbonate of lime darkened in colour by the action of time. Lastly, many of these flints are ornamented with branching crystallisations, called _dendrites_, which form on their surface very delicate designs of a dark brown; these are owing to the combined action of the oxides of iron and manganese (fig. 8).
We must add that these flint implements often a.s.sume the colour of the soil in which they have been buried for so many centuries; and as Mr.
Prestwich, a learned English geologist, well remarks, this agreement in colour indicates that they have remained a very considerable time in the stratum which contains them.
Among the stone implements of primitive ages, some are found in a state of perfect preservation, which clearly bears witness to their almost unused state; others, on the contrary, are worn, rounded, and blunted, sometimes because they have done good service in bygone days, and sometimes because they have been many times rolled over and rubbed by diluvial waters, the action of which has produced this result. Some, too, are met with which are broken, and nothing of them remains but mere vestiges. In a general way, they are completely covered with a very thick coating which it is necessary to break off before they can be laid open to view.
They are especially found under the soil in grottos and caves, on which we shall remark further in some detail, and they are almost always mixed up with the bones of extinct mammalian species.
Certain districts which are entirely devoid of caves contain, however, considerable deposits of these stone implements. We may mention in this category the alluvial quarternary beds of the valley of the Somme, known under the name of drift beds, which were worked by Boucher de Perthes with an equal amount of perseverance and success.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 9.--Section of a Gravel Quarry at Saint-Acheul, which contained the wrought Flints found by Boucher de Perthes.]
This alluvium was composed of a gravelly deposit, which geologists refer to the great inundations which, during the epoch of the great bear and the mammoth, gave to Europe, by hollowing out its valleys, its present vertical outline. The excavations in the sand and gravel near Amiens and Abbeville, which were directed with so much intelligence by Boucher de Perthes, have been the means of exhuming thousands of worked flints, affording unquestionable testimony of the existence of man during the quaternary epoch.
All these worked flints may be cla.s.sed under some of the princ.i.p.al types, from which their intended use may be approximately conjectured.
One of the types which is most extensively distributed, especially in the drift beds of the valley of the Somme, where scarcely any other kind is found, is the _almond-shaped_ type (fig. 10).
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 10.--Hatchet of the _Almond-shaped_ type, from the Valley of the Somme.]
The instruments of this kind are hatchets of an oval shape, more or less elongated, generally flattened on both sides, but sometimes only on one, carefully chipped all over their surface so as to present a cutting edge. The workmen of the Somme give them the graphic name of _cats'
tongues_.
They vary much in size, but are generally about six inches long by three wide, although some are met with which are much larger. The Pre-historic Gallery in the Universal Exposition of 1867, contained one found at Saint-Acheul, and exhibited by M. Robert, which measured eleven inches in length by five in width. This remarkable specimen is represented in fig. 11.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 11.--Flint Hatchet from Saint-Acheul of the so-called _Almond-shaped type_.]
Another very characteristic form is that which is called the _Moustier type_ (fig. 12), because they have been found in abundance in the beds in the locality of Moustier, which forms a portion of the department of Dordogne. This name is applied to the pointed flints which are only wrought on one side, the other face being completely plain.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 12.--Wrought Flint (_Moustier type_).]
To the same deposit also belongs the flint _sc.r.a.per_, the sharp edge of which forms the arc of a circle, the opposite side being of some considerable thickness so as to afford a grasp to the hand of the operator.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 13.--Flint Sc.r.a.per.]
Some of these instruments (fig. 13) are finely toothed all along their sharp edge; they were evidently used for the same purposes as our saws.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 14.--Flint Knife, found at Menchecourt, near Abbeville.]
The third type (fig. 14) is that of _knives_. They are thin and narrow tongue-shaped flakes, cleft off from the lump of flint at one blow. When one of the ends is chipped to a point, these knives become scratchers.
Sometimes these flints are found to be wrought so as to do service as augers.
The question is often asked, how these primitive men were able to manufacture their weapons, implements, and utensils, on uniform models, without the help of metallic hammers. This idea has, indeed, been brought forward as an argument against those who contend for the existence of quaternary man. Mr. Evans, an English geologist, replied most successfully to this objection by a very simple experiment. He took a pebble and fixed it in a wooden handle; having thus manufactured a stone hammer, he made use of it to chip a flint little by little, until he had succeeded in producing an oval hatchet similar to the ancient one which he had before him.
The flint-workers who, up to the middle of the present century, prepared gun-flints for the army, were in the habit of splitting the stone into splinters. But they made use of steel hammers to cleave the flint, whilst primitive man had nothing better at his disposal than another and rather harder stone.
Primitive man must have gone to work in somewhat the following way: They first selected flints, which they brought to the shape of those cores or _nuclei_ which are found in many places in company with finished implements; then, by means of another and harder stone of elongated shape, they cleft flakes off the flint. These flakes were used for making knives, scratchers, spear or arrow-heads, hatchets, tomahawks, sc.r.a.pers, &c. Some amount of skill must have been required to obtain the particular shape that was required; but constant practice in this work exclusively must have rendered this task comparatively easy.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 15.--Flint Core or Nucleus.]