A HISTORY OF SURREY 



have been found in the form of vigorous sketches of men, animals and 

 other objects made upon bones as well as in carvings executed in the 

 same material. The skill displayed in the fashioning of palaeolithic 

 implements is very great, and from the few actual remains of man of 

 that period which have been discovered and recorded there is reason to 

 believe that he was as well endowed with brain as were the men and 

 women who lived in the neolithic age. 



Very few if indeed any traces have been found of human inter- 

 ments of the palaeolithic age, most of the graves which had been regarded 

 as belonging to that early period having been proved upon careful 

 examination to belong to the neolithic or subsequent races. 



The only evidence of this interesting age in Surrey that has yet 

 been recorded consists of the flint implements which were shaped by 

 human workmanship. These, in consequence of the practically im- 

 perishable material of which they are formed, have been preserved 

 through all the changes which have happened during the long period 

 of time which separates the palaeolithic age from our own. 



Perhaps it will be convenient at this point, before considering the 

 implements discovered in Surrey, to mention a few of the more promi- 

 nent features by which the implements of the palaeolithic age may be 

 distinguished from those of the neolithic age. There are several points 

 of difference between the two classes, but a few will be sufficient for the 

 present purpose. As far as the workmanship is concerned it may be 

 remarked that a palaeolithic implement was formed by a few bold and 

 skilful blows which produced the desired shape without the expenditure 

 of much labour. The stone selected for this purpose was sometimes 

 one that had been procured from the chalk, and sometimes a flint from 

 the coarse gravels of the river drift which had already been fractured 

 and worn by natural forces. 



Neolithic implements, on the other hand, to which more particular 

 reference will be made hereafter, were usually formed from a special 

 kind of flint that was found to be particularly suitable for the purpose. 

 The blows by which it was brought into the desired shape were more 

 carefully directed and more numerous ; and in the case of highly 

 finished celts and axes, the whole or a portion of the cutting edge, 

 and not infrequently the whole of the surface, was finished by a 

 grinding process which brought the stone to a smooth condition and 

 obliterated all marks of the chipping by which it had been roughly 

 shaped. 



With regard to the superficial or other changes which the two 

 kinds of flint implements have undergone, it will suffice for the present 

 purpose to say that the palaeolithic have in many cases been much 

 changed in structure for some depth below their surface, whilst the 

 larger proportion have acquired a reddish brown stain much resembling 

 in appearance that produced by oxide or protoxide of iron. It is un- 

 doubtedly a mark of the antiquity of the fractures, but apparently does 

 not necessarily imply that the implements have been embedded in a 



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