506 DEVELOPMENT OF PRIMAL SHAPING ARTS. 



sharp or incisive stones would be demanded for cutting, piercing, 

 digging, scraping, and the like. The same statement may be made 

 with respect to the stone tools applicable to purposes of defense and 

 offense, and available in activities pertaining to shelter, clothing, and 

 transportation. 



These two general classes of stone implements fulfilled, so far as 

 stone could fulfill them, all the requirements of man's existence in 

 primal days; and if the question were limited to that of the relative 

 need of blunt and sharp stones in the practice of the arts, we should 

 be compelled to say that no distinction could be made, that one class 

 could not claim precedence over the other in usefulness or in period 

 of utilization. 



A QUESTION OF SUPPLYING WANTS NOT OTHERWISE SUPPLIED. 



But it should be most carefully noted that the question is not one as 

 to the comparative usefulness of these forms of implements, or even 

 of the period of their adoption, but of their production as works of 

 art. Which form would man first be induced to shape for himself, 

 thus adding a group of artificial utensils to his simple list of adapted 

 appliances? If. as seems to be the case, both classes of tools, the 

 blunt and the sharp, are equally essential to man, the question becomes 

 one of natural supply. If nature furnished all that was required in 

 the way of tools, art would not be called on to produce them. If 

 nature supplied one class meagerly and the other abundantly, the 

 meager class would be added to by artificial means. Now if we review 

 the various regions of the world that could have served as the abiding 

 place of auroral man, we rind that the rounded stone — the breaking, 

 bruising, grinding stone — is nearly everywhere more readily obtain- 

 able than the cutting, piercing stone. The former, being ready at 

 hand, would be at first most freely utilized and for a long time util- 

 ized in the natural state, while the latter, being also known and used, 

 yet comparatively rare, would be artificially produced as soon as the 

 capacity to do so was developed. 



Tin 1 artificial sharp stone, the intentionally shaped sharp stone, 

 would thus naturally have precedence as an art form over the intention- 

 ally shaped rounded stone. It would probably be the first represen- 

 tative of the shaping art in stone to come into general use. But there 

 are other points to be considered. 



OPERATION OF THE PRIMAL SHAPING ACTS. 



Incipient stages. — We must now look more fully into the operation 

 of the four elementary stone-shaping acts- into the beginnings of the 

 arts to which they give rise. It is important to note that the act, the 

 essential element of the process, is not necessarily an index of the 

 simplicity or ease of its utilization. The ease of the first step in a long 



