STONE AGE 



745 



are mostly so rude in form and finish that it is 

 impossible to apply to them names indicative of 

 specific use (see tig. 1). They are roughly chipped 

 and destitute of that secondary working of finer 

 character along the sides and edges which gives 

 finish to the forms of the neolithic types. They 

 present, however, a considerable number of well- 

 marked typical forms. Those from the river-gravels 

 are chiefly flakes, trimmed and untrimmed, for cut- 

 ting and scraping ; pointed implements, some al- 

 mond-shaped or tongue-shaped ; and more obtusely 

 pointed implements, with rounded and often un- 

 dressed butts. There is also a series of scraper- 

 like implements, and another of oval sharp-rimmed 

 implements, which are more carefully finished than 

 most of the other varieties. The flint implements 

 from the caves present a greater variety of form. 

 They are generally characterised by secondary 



Fig. 2. Carved Reindeer-horn, Laugeriebasse, Dordogne. 

 ( From Cartailhac's La France Prehistorv(ue ) 



working, and are therefore much more carefully 

 finished, often in many respects approaching closely 

 to neolithic types. From the caves also come a 

 series of implements of bone and of carvings on 

 bone which have excited much astonishment on 

 account of the extraordinary contrast between their 

 artistic character and the extreme rudeness of many 

 of the implements of stone with which they are 

 associated ( see fig. 2 ). These lx>ne implements con- 

 sist of well-made needles, borers, javelin or harpoon 

 points barbed on one or both sides, and implements 

 of reindeer- horn of unknown use (called by the 

 French archieologists batons de commandement), 

 which are usually carved in relief or ornamented 

 with incised representations of animals, and occa- 

 sionally of hnman figures. The animals, as for 

 instance a group of reindeer from the cave of La 

 Madelaine, Dordogne, are drawn with wonderful 

 faithfulness, freedom, and spirit. In another in- 

 stance, engraved on a flat piece of mammoth-tusk 

 is an outline representation of that animal showing 

 ite characteristic elephantine form and the cover- 

 ing of hair peculiar to the species. The neolithic 

 stone implements consist of axes and axe-hammers, 



Fig. 3. Lozenge-shaped (a), leaf-shaped (fc), and barbed 

 (c) arrow-heads of Flint. 



knives, daggers, spear and arrow heads (fig. 3), 

 saws, chisels, borers, and scrapers. The axes and 

 axe-hammers are made of many varieties of stone 

 besides flint. Some of the finer polished axes are 

 of jade and fibrolite. The jade axes were once 

 thought to have been importations from eastern 

 Asia ( see JADE ), but the clappings of their manufac- 



ture have been found in the lake-dwelling sites of the 

 Lake of Constance, and jade itself was discovered 

 about 1887 in situ at Jordansmuhl near Breslau in 

 Silesia. The axes are mostly imperforate. They 

 are simple wedges, the butt end of which was in- 

 serted in the shaft, or in a socket of stag's-horn with 

 a tenon on the upper end mortised into the shaft, 



Fig. 4. Polished Stone Axes or Celts : 

 a, 5i inches ; b, 13 inches ; c, 6 inches long. 



though the shaft was sometimes pnt through a hole 

 in the stag's-horn socket. The perforate stone axes, 

 or axe-hammers, which belong to the close of the 

 stone age, had the hole for the shaft bored through 

 them by a cylinder of wood or bone, working with 

 sharp sand and water. Most of the other imple- 

 ments were made only of flint, and generally 

 finished by chipping, without being ground or 

 polished. Some of the long Danish knives and 

 daggers (fig. 5) are marvels of dexter- 

 ous workmanship, on account of the 

 thinness of the blade, and the straight- 

 ness and keenness of the edge, pro- 

 duced by the mere process of chipping 

 or removing successive flakes from the 

 surface. 



The burial customs of the stone age 

 included both inhumation and crema- 

 tion, the former being, however, the 

 earlier method. No burials of the 

 river-drift period have yet been dis- 

 covered. The cave-dwellers of the 

 stone age buried their dead in cavities 

 of the rocks like that of Cro-Magnon 

 in Dordogne, in which four or five 

 skeletons were found huddled together, 

 without being enclosed in cists or 

 accompanied by sepulchral pottery. Flint-dagger. 

 From a comparison of the remains from 

 such cave-cemeteries in different localities it has 

 been concluded that even at this early period 

 Europe was already occupied by more than one 

 race of men. The populations of the neolithic 

 time deposited their (lead, with or without previ- 

 ous cremation, in or on the floors of the chambers 

 of dolmens, or great chambered cairns. The sepul- 

 chral pottery accompanying these burials, in 

 Britain at least, is generally of a hard-baked 

 dark-coloured paste, the form of the vessels mostly 

 basin-shaped and round -bottomed, and the orna- 

 mentation entirely composed of straight lines 

 placed at various angles to each other. The 

 implements found with these interments are 

 mostly of the commoner kind, such as flint 

 knives, scrapers, or strike-lights (used with a 

 nodule of pyrites of iron), arrow-heads, and more 

 rarely axes and axe-hammers of flint or polished 

 stone. The neolithic inhabitants of northern and 

 central Europe were not merely nomadic tribes 

 subsisting on the products of the chase ; they 

 practised agriculture, and possessed the common 



Fig. 5. 

 Danish 



