GENERAL VIEWS ON ARCHEOLOGY. 



313 



the wearing away of the summits in the angles of the ancient jaws is 

 more regular, and when we look straight along the surface of mastica- 

 tion, we perceive that the latter is an almost perfect plane. Therefore 

 the primitive race ate in an entirely different manner from what we 

 do ; they used their incisive teeth, not to sever their victuals, as we 

 do, but to seize them, to hold them, and to grind them. Thus we dis- 

 tinguish sometimes, according to what the individual had been eating 

 last, striae in a transverse direction to the axis of the mouth on the 

 facets of mastication of the incisive teeth. 



The Greenlanders, among the other people of the north, display the 

 same peculiarity. When they eat flesh, after having disengaged it 

 from the hone at one end, they seize it with the front teeth and tear it 

 away partially ; they then cut off the mouthful close to their lips by 

 means of a knife. Even their children practice this method of eating 

 with a dexterity which Europeans cannot imitate. 



Ancient Knives. A circumstance, which is not without archaeo- 

 logical importance, is that when eating and in general for the require- 

 ments of their industry, the Greenlanders do not use the knife with a 

 longitudinal cutting edge like ours. Their knife is, properly speaking, 

 a chisel, whose edge has a transverse direction, rather oblique to the 

 longitudinal axis of the instrument. 



This may explain why we find in the North so great a quantity of 

 stone wedges or hatchets. These articles have not all served as hatch- 

 ets, a great many were nothing more than knives of the Greenland 

 pattern. So there are some not seldom found with an edge peculiarly 

 curved, sometimes oblique. They are then rather generally cut away 

 more or less to a point towards the other extremity, which rendered 

 them decidedly unfitted for any handle, whilst they thus became more 

 easily managed by the hand. They were evidently knives. There 

 are some even that are clearly characterized as having been intended 

 for the right hand. This is the case with the handsome specimen in 

 Nephrite, Fig. 9 ; for, when taken hold of in the right hand with the 



Pig. 9. (i) 



Hatchet-knife of Nephrite. 

 Moosseeiiorf. 



Fig. 10. (i) 



Hatchet intended for a handle. 

 Switzerland. 



atorny. Brussel's edition, 1838, vol. II, p. 105. The skulls of the Danish queens, Dagmar, 

 deceased in 1216, and Beengjard, deceased in 1221, whose tombs were examined in 1855, 

 show also this ancient use. See Kongregavene I Ringstedkirkc, Kjoebenhavn, 1858. There 

 are anatomists who consider the irregular use of the teeth as an effect of the crossing of 

 races in modern times ; but, according to Mr. Steenstrup, this opinion is inadmissible. 



