548 



THE CHANGING WORLD 



E0LITH6 



Eolithic implements are somewhat uncertain in character, although 

 very stimulating to the imagination. They are "handy" stones, 

 sometimes rudely chipped without any definite design, except that 



they fit the hand and some- 

 times show evidence of having 

 been used. Whether they 

 ever did fit into a calloused 

 prehistoric human hand is 

 problematical. Doubtless the 

 first tools and weapons were 

 not made but were found and 

 picked up, already sufficiently 

 fashioned by such natural 

 forces as frost and erosion. 

 It was not until later that 

 flints were made over by 

 himian agency into shapes for 

 a definite purpose. 



PaleoUths show unmistaka- 

 ble evidences of having been 

 fashioned by man. The 

 earliest ones are of very 

 crude workmanship, perhaps 

 roughly sharpened at one 

 end, or chipped on one side 

 only. Tools of more im- 

 proved workmanship fol- 

 lowed — stone axes, cleavers, 

 scrapers, punches, spear and 

 arrow heads, and flakes with 

 notched sawlike margins or 

 sharp knifelike edges. Some 

 of these show a very remark- 

 able degree of skill in their 

 manufacture. The joy that 

 a modern boy experiences in the possession of his first jack-knife is a 

 possible echo of the delight which our cave-dwelling ancestors felt when 

 they succeeded in splitting off a knife-blade flake from a core of flint. 

 The paleolithic toolmakers worked for many thousands of years, 

 as evidenced by the associated remains of extinct animals, before they 



PALEOLITHS 



NEOUTH 



Flints, representinf; three periods of the 

 Stone age. Drawn from specimens in the col- 

 lection at Brown University, (From Walter, 

 Biology of the Vertebrates. By permission of 

 The Macmillan Company, publishers.) 



