The Pygmy Flint Age in Lincolnshire. 157 
SIMILARITY IN DESIGN. 
One point of great interest in these widely scattered Pygmy 
Flints is the great similarity in design. So much is this similarity 
carried out that if you place a Scunthorpe specimen beside one 
found on the Vindhya Hills in India, it is almost impossible 
to say which is from the one place and which is from the other. 
This similarity in design has led many specialists to think 
that the Pygmy Flints of Scunthorpe are the work of a migrating 
people, who passed over from India through Asia and Europe to 
Britain. Amongst those who accept this theory are Dr. Gatty and 
Vincent A. Smith, M.A., of the Indian Civil Service, one of the 
greatest specialists we have on this subject. 
WHAT WAS THE USE OF THESE PyGmy FLints ? 
Various conjectures have been made as to the use of these small 
flint implements. They must have been made for human daily 
use and need. 
Avvow Points are easily accounted for as used in hunting— 
being it is supposed fastened to wood shafts ; which is still the 
practice of Australian savages. 
; Fishing Hooks is another very natural suggestion, for some of 
the forms, when fixed with sinew or gut, the triangular form 
makes a specially suitable hook to catch in the throat of fish. 
Knives is undoubtedly another use to which some specimens 
are adapted; the clear cut edge would, even after the lapse of 
- thousands of years, cut flesh of animals at the present time. 
: Boring Tools for making holes to sew skins together for 
clothing purposes is also a natural theory for other specimens of 
_ these Pygmy Flints. 
' Chisels for scraping and shaping wood handles or hafts of 
their tools is also another suggestion, which is highly probable 
from the shape of the flints with a square cutting edge. 
- Skin Scrapers is still another use for which some specimens 
of the implements may have been made, by these people who 
lived by the chase—while it is also possible that other shapes 
ere mounted in wood frames and used as saws, sickles and 
harpoons, as shewn in British Museum Handbook, fig 118. 
a 
