Part 18 (1/2)

After this, Boucher de Perthes entertained no doubt whatever that these bones had been formerly employed as handles for flint implements. The same handle would serve for several stones, owing to the ease with which the artisan could take one flint out and replace it with another, by the aid of nothing but these wooden wedges. This is the reason why, in the peat-bogs, flints of this sort are always much more plentiful than the bone handles. We must also state that it seems as if they took little or no trouble in repairing the flints when they were blunted, knowing how easy it would be to replace them. They were thrown away, without further care; hence their profusion.

These handles are made of extremely hard bone, from which we may conclude that they were applied to operations requiring solid tools.

Most of them held the flint at one end only; but some were open at both ends, and would serve as handles for two tools at once.

Figs. 119 and 120 represent some of these flint tools in bone handles--the plates are taken from those in Boucher de Perthes' work.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 119.--Flint Tool in a Bone Handle.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 120.--Flint Tool with Bone Handle.]

Generally speaking, these handles gave but little trouble to those who made them. They were content with merely breaking the bone across, without even smoothing down the fracture, and then enlarging the medullary hollow which naturally existed; next they roughly squared or rounded the end which was intended to be grasped by the hand.

In fig. 121, we delineate one of these bone handles which is much more carefully fas.h.i.+oned; it has been cut off smooth at the open end, and the opposite extremity has been rounded off into a k.n.o.b, which is ornamented with a design.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 121.--Ornamented Bone Handle.]

During the polished-stone epoch, as during that which preceded it, the teeth of certain mammals were used in the way of ornament. But they were not content, as heretofore, with merely perforating them with holes and hanging them in a string round their necks; they were now wrought with considerable care. The teeth of the wild boar were those chiefly selected for this purpose. They were split lengthwise, so as to render them only half their original thickness, and were then polished and perforated with holes in order to string them.

In the peat-mosses of the valley of the Somme a number of boars' tusks have been found thus fas.h.i.+oned. The most curious discovery of this kind which has been made, was that of the object of which we give a sketch in fig. 122. It was found in 1834, near Pecquigny (Somme), and is composed of nineteen boars' tusks split into two halves, as we before mentioned, perfectly polished, and perforated at each end with a round hole.

Through these holes was pa.s.sed a string of some tendinous substance, the remains of which were, it is stated, actually to be seen at the time of the discovery. A necklace of this kind must have been of considerable value, as it would have necessitated a large amount of very tedious and delicate work.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 122.--Necklace made of Boars' Tusks, longitudinally divided.]

In the peat-bogs near Brussels polished flints have likewise been found, a.s.sociated with animal bones, and two specimens of the human _humerus_, belonging to two individuals.

The peat-bogs of Antwerp, in which were found a human frontal bone, characterised by its great thickness, and its small surface, have also furnished fine specimens of flint knives (fig. 123), which are in no way inferior to the best of those discovered at Grand-Pressigny.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 123.--Flint Knife, from the Peat-bogs near Antwerp.]

On none of the instruments of bone or horn, of which we have been speaking, are to be found the designs which we have described as being the work of man during the reindeer epoch. The artistic instinct seems to have entirely vanished. Perhaps the diluvial catastrophe, which destroyed so many victims, had, as one of its results, the effect of effacing the feeling of art, by forcing men to concentrate their ideas on one sole point--the care of providing for their subsistence and defence.

A quant.i.ty of remains, gathered here and there, bear witness to the fact that in the polished-stone epoch the use of pottery was pretty widely spread. Most of the specimens are, as we have said, nothing but attempts of a very rough character, but still they testify to a certain amount of progress. The ornamentation is more delicate and more complicated. We notice the appearance of open-work handles, and projections perforated for the purpose of suspension. In short, there is a perceptible, though but preliminary step made towards the real creations of art.

In the caves of Ariege, MM. Garrigou and Filhol found some remains of ancient pottery of clay provided with handles, although of a shape altogether primitive. Among the fragments of pottery found by these _savants_, there was one which measured 11 inches in height, and must have formed a portion of a vase 20 inches high. This vessel, which was necessarily very heavy, had been hung to cords; this was proved by finding on another portion of the same specimen three holes which had been perforated in it.

_Agriculture._--We have certain evidence that man, during the polished-stone epoch, was acquainted with husbandry, or, in other words, that he cultivated cereals. MM. Garrigou and Filhol found in the caves of Ariege more than twenty mill-stones, which could only have been used in grinding corn. These stones are from 8 to 24 inches in diameter.

The tribes, therefore, which, during the polished-stone epoch, inhabited the district now called Ariege, were acquainted with the cultivation of corn.

In 1869, Dr. Foulon-Menard published an article intended to describe a stone found at Penchasteau, near Nantes, in a tomb belonging to the Stone Age.[20] This stone is 24 inches wide, and hollowed out on its upper face. It was evidently used for crus.h.i.+ng grain with the help of a stone roller, or merely a round pebble, which was rolled up and down in the cavity. The meal obtained by this pressure and friction made its way down the slope in the hollowing out of the stone, and was caught in a piece of matting, or something of the kind.

To enable our readers to understand the fact that an excavation made in a circular stone formed the earliest corn-mill in these primitive ages, we may mention that, even in our own time, this is the mode of procedure practised among certain savage tribes in order to crush various seeds and corn.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 124.--Primitive Corn-mill.]

In the 'Voyage du Mississippi a l'Ocean,' by M. Molhausen, we read:--

”The princ.i.p.al food of the Indians consisted of roasted cakes of maize and wheat, the grains of which had been pulverised _between two stones_.”[21]

In Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi (Central Africa), it is stated that ”the corn-mills of the Mangajas, Makalolos, Landines and other tribes are composed of a block of granite or syenite, sometimes even of mica-schist, 15 to 18 inches square by 5 or 6 inches thick, and a piece of quartz, or some other rock of equal hardness about the size of a half-brick; one of the sides of this subst.i.tute for a millstone is convex, so as to fit into a hollow of a trough-like shape made in the large block, which remains motionless. When the woman wants to grind any corn, she kneels down, and, taking in both hands the convex stone, she rubs it up and down in the hollow of the lower stone with a motion similar to that of a baker pressing down his dough and rolling it in front of him. Whilst rubbing it to and fro, the housewife leans all her weight on the smaller stone, and every now and then places a little more corn in the trough. The latter is made sloping, so that the meal as soon as it is made falls down into a cloth fixed to catch it.”