Part 16 (1/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 101.--Another Stone Saw from Denmark.]
We must now turn our attention to instruments made of bone or stag's horn. They are much less numerous than those of stone, and have nothing about them of a very remarkable character. The only implement that is worthy of notice is the harpoon (fig. 102). It is a carved bone, and furnished with teeth all along one side, the other edge being completely smooth. The harpoon of the reindeer epoch was decidedly superior to it.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 102.--Bone Harpoon of the Stone Age from Denmark.]
On account of its singularity, we must not omit to mention an object made of bone, composed of a wide flat plate, from which spring seven or eight teeth of considerable length, and placed very close together; there is a kind of handle, much narrower, and terminating in a k.n.o.b, like the top of a walking-stick. This is probably one of the first combs which ever unravelled the thickly-grown heads of hair of primitive man.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 103.--Bone Comb from Denmark.]
It is a well-known fact that amber is very plentiful on the coasts of the Baltic. Even in the Stone Age, it was already much appreciated by the northern tribes, who used to make necklaces of it, either by merely perforating the rough morsels of amber and stringing them in a row, or by cutting them into spherical or elliptical beads, as is the case nowadays.
Fig. 104 represents a necklace and also various other ornaments made of yellow amber, which have been drawn from specimens in the Museum of Saint-Germain.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 104.--Necklace and various Ornaments of Amber.]
Although these northern tribes of the polished-stone epoch were such skilful workmen in flint, they were, nevertheless, but poor hands at pottery. The _debris_ of vessels collected from the Danish _kitchen-middens_, and also from the peat-bogs and tombs, are in every way rough, and testify to a very imperfect knowledge of the art of moulding clay. They may be said to mark the first efforts of a manufacturing art which is just springing into existence, which is seeking for the right path, although not, as yet, able to find it. The art of pottery (if certain relics be relied on) was more advanced at a more ancient period, that is, during the reindeer epoch.
We have already stated that during the reindeer epoch there existed certain manufactories of weapons and tools, the productions of which were distributed all round the adjacent districts, although over a somewhat restricted circle. In the epoch at which we have now arrived, certain _workshops_--for really this is the proper name to give them--acquired a remarkable importance, and their relations became of a much more extensive character. In several of the Belgian caves, flints have been found which must have come from the celebrated workshop of Grand-Pressigny, situated in that part of the present France which forms the department of Indre-et-Loire, and, from their very peculiar character, are easily recognisable. Commerce and manufacture had then emerged from their merely rudimentary state, and were entering into a period of activity implying a certain amount of civilisation.
The great principle of division of labour had already been put into practice, for there were special workshops both for the shaping and polis.h.i.+ng of flints.
The most important of all the workshops which have been noticed in France is, unquestionably, that of Grand-Pressigny, which we have already mentioned. It was discovered by Dr. Leveille, the medical man of the place; but, to tell the truth, it is not so much in itself a centre of manufacture as a series of workshops distributed in the whole neighbourhood round Pressigny.
At the time of this discovery, that is in 1864, flints were found in thousands imbedded in the vegetable mould on the surface of the soil, over a superficies of 12 to 14 acres. The Abbe Chevalier, giving an account of this curious discovery to the _Academie des Sciences_ at Paris, wrote: ”It is impossible to walk a single step without treading on some of these objects.”
The workshops of Grand-Pressigny furnish us with a considerable variety of instruments. We find hatchets in all stages of manufacture, from the roughest attempt up to a perfectly polished weapon. We find, also, long flakes or flint-knives cleft off with a single blow with astonis.h.i.+ng skill.
All these objects, even the most beautiful among them, are nevertheless defective in some respect or other; hence it may be concluded that they were the refuse thrown aside in the process of manufacture. In this way may be explained the acc.u.mulation of so many of these objects in the same spot.
There were likewise narrow and elongated points forming a kind of piercer, perfectly wrought; also sc.r.a.pers, and saws of a particular type which seem to have been made in a special workshop. They are short and wide, and have at each end a medial slot intended to receive a handle.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 105.--Nucleus in the Museum of Saint-Germain, from the Workshop of Grand-Pressigny.]
But the objects which are the most numerous of all, and those which obviate any doubt that Pressigny was once an important centre of the manufacture of flint, are the _nuclei_ (fig. 105), or the remnants of the lump of flint, from which the large blades known under the name of knives were cleft off. Some of these lumps which we have seen in the Museum of St. Germain were as much as 11 and 13 inches in length; but the greater part did not exceed 7 inches. The labourers of Touraine, who often turn up these flints with their plough-shares, call them _pounds of b.u.t.ter_, looking at the similarity of shape. At the present day these _nuclei_ are plentiful in all the collections of natural history and geology.
A strange objection has been raised against the antiquity of the hatchets, knives, and weapons found at Pressigny. M. Eugene Robert has a.s.serted that these flints were nothing else but the refuse of the siliceous ma.s.ses which, at the end of the last century and especially at the beginning of the present, were used in the manufacture of gun-flints!
The Abbe Bourgeois, M. Penguilly l'Haridon, and Mr. John Evans did not find much difficulty in proving the slight foundation there was for this criticism. In the department of Loire-et-Cher, in which the gun-flint manufacture still exists, the residue from the process bears no resemblance whatever to the _nuclei_ of Pressigny; the fragments are much less in bulk, and do not present the same constantly-occurring and regular shapes. Added to this, they are never chipped at the edges, like a great number of the flakes coming from the workshops of Touraine.
But another and altogether peremptory argument is that the flints of Pressigny-le-Grand are unfitted, on account of the texture, for the manufacture of gun-flints. Moreover, the records of the Artillery Depot, as remarked by M. Penguilly l'Haridon, librarian of the Artillery Museum, do not make mention of the locality of Pressigny having ever been worked for this purpose. Lastly, the oldest inhabitants of the commune have testified that they never either saw or heard of any body of workmen coming into the district to work flints. M. Eugene Robert's hypothesis, which MM. Decaisne and Elie de Beaumont thought right to patronise, is, therefore, as much opposed to facts as to probability.
Very few polished flints are found in the workshops of Pressigny-le-Grand; it is, therefore, imagined that their existence commenced before the polished-stone epoch. According to this idea, the _nuclei_ would belong to a transitional epoch between the period of chipped stone, properly so called, and that of polished stone. The first was just coming to an end, but the second had not actually commenced. In other words, most of the Pressigny flints have the typical shapes and style of cutting peculiar to the polished-stone age, but the polis.h.i.+ng is wanting.
This operation was not practised in the workshops of Pressigny until some considerable period after they were founded, and were already in full operation. In the neighbourhood of this locality a number of polishers have been found of a very remarkable character. They are large blocks of sandstone (fig. 106), furrowed all over, or only on a portion of their surface, with grooves of various depths, in which objects might be polished by an energetic friction.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 106.--Polisher from Grand-Pressigny, both faces being shown.]
Some polishers of the same kind, which have been found in various departments, are rather different from the one we have just named. Thus, one specimen which was found by M. Leguay in the environs of Paris, in the burial-places of Varenne-Saint-Hilaire, of which we give a representation further on, is provided not only with grooves but also hollows of a basin-like shape, and of some little depth.
The polis.h.i.+ng of the flints was carried into effect by rubbing them against the bottom of these hollows, which were moistened by water, and no doubt contained siliceous dust of a harder nature than the stone which had to be polished.