PRIMEVAL DEXTERITY. 139: 
not in this case intended to serve any particular purpose, but was: 
rather the accidental result of the method pursued in chipping the 
flint into its present form.”* A similar curvature is seen in a long- 
pointed implement from Reculver, in the collection of Mr. J. Brent, 
F.S.A., and again in another large example of this class, from Hoxne, 
presented to the Society of Antiquaries of London, upwards of eighty 
years ago. This, as Dr. Evans notes, exhibits the same peculiarity 
of the twisting of the edges so markedly, and indeed so closely 
resembles the specimen in his own collection, that they might have 
been made by the same hand. Of another example, from Santon 
Downham, near Hetford, Suffolk, almond-shaped, and with dendritic 
markings in evidence of iis paleolithic date, Dr. Evans remarks : 
“Tt is fairly symmetrical in contour, with an edge all round, which 
is somewhat blunted at the base. This edge, however, is not in one 
plane, but considerably curved, so that when seen sideways it forms 
an ogee curve ;” and he adds: “I have other implements of the 
same, and of more pointed forms, with similarly curved edges, both 
from France, and other parts of England, but whether this curvature 
was intentional it is impossible to say. In some cases it is so 
marked that it can hardly be the result of accident; and the curve is, 
so far as I have observed, almost without exception ¢, and not s. If 
not intentional, the form may be the result of all the blows by which 
the implement was finally chipped out having been given on the one 
face on one side, and on the opposite on the other.”t In other 
words, the implement-maker worked throughout with the flaker in 
the same hand ; and that hand, with very rare exceptions, appears 
to have been the right hand. The evidence adduced manifestly 
points to the predominance of right-handed men among the palzoli- 
thic flint-workers. For if the flint-arrow maker, working apart, and 
with no motive suggested by the necessity of accommodating him- 
self to a neighbouring workman, has habitually used the right hand 
from remote paleolithic times, it only remains to determine the 
cause of a practice too nearly invariable to have been the result of 
accident. 
Unless there be some organic cause for the preference of one hand 
rather than the other, no systematic use of either hand would be 
likely to manifest itself in rude states of society where there is little 
* Ancient Stone Implements, p. 520. 
t+ Ancient Stone Implements, p. 501. 
