PAL.^îOLITHIC DEXTERITY. 131 



describes the mode of usiug them as witnessed b}^ Sir Edward Belcher among the 

 Eskimo of Cape Lisburue. but withovrt reference to the point now alluded to. Dr. John 

 Eae, who, like myself, is inveterately left-handed, informs me that, without having 

 taken particular notice of Indian or Eskimo practise in the use of one or the other hand, 

 he observed that some among iliem were markedly ambi-dextrous. But, he adds, "from 

 a curious story told me by an Eskimo about a bear throwing a large piece of ice at the 

 head of a walrus ; and telling me, as a noteworthy fact, that he threw it with the left 

 forepaw, as if it were something unusual, it would seem to indicate that left-handedness 

 was not very common among the Eskimos." But if the deductions based on the experi- 

 mental working in Hint are well ibimded, the test supplied by the direction of the flaking 

 grooves of obsidian, chert, or flint implements, will be ecjually available for determining 

 the prevalent use of one or other hand by the Eskimo and other modern savage races, as 

 among those of the Palteolithic and Neolithic Periods. 



I have already referred in a former paper, {Canadian Journal N.S., Vol. XIII. p. 208) to 

 an interesting discovery, supposed to indicate the traces of a left-handed workman of pre- 

 historic times. The Rev. William Greenwell carried out a series of explorations of a 

 number of flint-pits, known as Grimes' Graves, near Brandon, in Norfolk ; and in a com- 

 munication to the Ethnological Society of London on the subject, he states that in clear- 

 ing out one of the subterranean galleries excavated in the chalk by the British workmen 

 of the remote Neolithic Age, in order to procure flint nodules in a condition best adapted 

 for their purpose, it was found that, while the pits were still being worked, the roof of the 

 gallery had given way and blocked up its whole width. The removal of this obstruction 

 disclosed three recesses extending beyond the face of the chalk, at the end of the gallery, 

 which had been excavated by the ancient miners in procuring the flint. In front of two 

 of these recesses thus hollowed out, lay two picks corresponding to others found in various 

 parts of the shafts and galleries, made from the antlers of the red deer. But, Canon Green- 

 well noted that, while the handle of each was laid towards the mouth of the gallery, the 

 tines which formed the blades of the picks pointed towards each other, shewing, as he 

 conceived, that in all probability, they had been used respectively by a right and a left- 

 handed man. The day's work over, the men had laid down their tools, ready for the 

 next day's work ; meanwhile the roof had fallen in, and the picks were left there 

 undisturbed through all the intervening centuries, till the reopening of the gallery in 

 recent years. 



But the art of the palaeolithic artificer was by no means limited to his operations in 

 flint and stone. Specimens of his carvings in bone and ivory have been preserved, 

 securely sealed up in the cave-breccia: his lances and daggers of deers' horn, his maces 

 and batons decorated with artistic skill, — all furnishing assured tests of his dexterity. Still 

 more, those relics of primitive art are accompanied by other eA'idences of testhetic taste, 

 serving to throw light on the question of the prevalence of right or left-handedness among 

 the skilled workmen of Palaeolithic or Neolithic Ages ; as well as on the far more important 

 question of the intellectual development of primitive man. "Within the last twenty years 

 repeated discoveries in ancient cave-dwellings and retreats of Europe, and especially in 

 those of southern France, have familiarised us with numerous specimens of the work of 

 skilled draftsmen of palaeolithic Europe. The evidence which they furnish of the dexterity 



