42 PREHISTORIC FISHING. 



stone, and doubtless used for various purposes. Some, which represent chisels, 

 were set in pieces of deer-horn, hollowed at one end for receiving the blade, and 

 forming convenient handles. Larger ones served as axe-heads, being either in- 

 serted directly into the thick end of a wooden club, or into an intermediate deer- 

 horn socket worked into a square form at the upper end, to fit into a corresponding- 

 cavity of the wooden shaft. These statements are not conjectural, a few complete 

 axes, blade and shaft united, having been discovered in the pile-works. At Meilen 

 and other lacustrine stations there have been found celts made of nephrite and 

 jadeite, hard mineral substances, not known to occur in Europe, but not 

 uncommon in different parts of Asia. Some, who ascribe the lacustrine settle- 

 ments to new-comers from abroad, have suggested that they imported these 

 implements, which doubtless were much valued on account of their hardness and 

 greenish color. Various lake-villages of the stone age have furnished well-shaped 

 stone axes pierced for the insertion of handles. Among other stone objects 

 found in the pile-works may be mentioned slabs of hard sandstone upon wliieh 

 the celts, etc., were ground, grain-crushers, and flat or more or less concave slabs 

 used in connection with them, hammers in the shape of pebbles of suitable form 

 and little or not at all modified by art, net-sinkers, and spindle-whorls. 



Most varied were the uses the lake-men made of the horns, bones, and teeth 

 of animals. The horns of the stag were made into the handles and celt-sockets 

 already mentioned ; stout pieces of this material, perforated with holes for 

 holding wooden handles, served, according to the manner in which their ends 

 Avere fashioned, as hammers, hatchets, or hoes ; and the antler was sometimes 

 converted into a weapon or a hoe by the removal of the prongs, excepting that 

 near the brow. Bones furnished the material for arrow and spear-heads, 

 poniards, chisels, scrapers, piercers, needles with or without eyes, fishing- 

 implements, and other articles. The teeth of the bear and the tusks of the 

 wild boar were utilized for similar purposes, the latter, for instance, to serve 

 as cutting or scraping-tools, after the inner curve had been ground to an edge. 

 The lake-dwellers, like the men of palaeolithic times, wore the perforated teeth 

 of certain animals as trophies or amulets. 



The number of objects of wood preserved in peat and water shows how 

 extensively that material was used by the lake-dwellers. They consist of handles 

 and shafts for implements, maces resembling that with which Hercules is usuall)^ 

 represented, mallets used in driving the piles and for other purposes, bows, 

 threshing-flails, ladles, dippers, bowls, tubs,=-= and boats made of a single trunk ; 

 besides knife-shaped tools, combs, primitive racks for suspending apparel and 

 utensils, and various other objects. 



That pottery was abundantly made even in the lake-settlements of earliest 



* These vessels bear a great resemblance to the woodenware of the same class made at the present time. 



