A HISTORY OF ESSEX 



Other Essex examples have been found in the Roding and smaller 

 river valleys, while some finds have been made in the gravel on higher 

 ground. 



Coeval with the mammoth and Rhinoceros tichorkinus, now long 

 extinct, and with the reindeer, hippopotamus, bison, hyaena and other 

 animals no longer habitant in England, man waged war against beasts 

 of forest and fen, his weapons being of wood or stone. 



The paucity in variety of weapons indicates a savage condition in 

 which man's wants were few ; while the chipped, but never ground or 

 polished, tools show the narrow limit of his ideas of fabrication ; but 

 within those lines his works were excellent for their purpose, and dis- 

 play judgment in the selection of material and skill in shaping it. 



Flint was in most cases the material used for the palaeolithic weapons 

 which have survived, and the varieties consist mainly of flakes, oval 

 cutters and tongue or pear-shaped pointed implements ; no relics which 

 can with certainty be described as arrowheads have been discovered, but 

 the sharply-pointed little triangular flints may have been used for arrow- 

 heads or served as javelin points. 



The flakes, which probably were used as scraping and cutting 

 instruments, are of much the same character as those of the neolithic 

 period to be presently mentioned, but generally speaking they may be 

 described as larger, coarser, thicker and broader. 1 



The tools referred to as oval cutters partake sometimes of more 

 circular shape ; they are flat in form and usually carefully chipped 

 round the edge. It has been suggested that they were frequently used 

 as missiles, but probably their use was multiplex (fig. i). 



The implements which are best described as tongue-shaped or pear- 

 shaped are the most characteristic weapons of palaeolithic man, serving 

 probably as his constant companions in war, the chase and everyday life. 

 They vary considerably in size, as in gradations of form, though all may 

 be regarded as pointed implements. Most of our examples have a 

 rounded butt, from which the sides taper. Some were probably hafted 

 to handles, others possibly fixed to the end of wooden spears, but most 

 would be suitable for use in the hand alone. Though not exactly of 

 the celt or chisel form, these weapons may have been the embryo of 

 the neolithic celt, which in its turn was the parent of bronze and iron 

 axes, hatchets and adzes (fig. 2). 



A ' palaeolithic floor ' at Little or East Thurrock provided Mr. 

 Worthington G. Smith with a fossilized antler, showing an artificial 

 fracture produced by the straight edge of a palaeolithic weapon, but it is 

 rare to find relics of man of this period in any material other than stone. 2 



Cave dwellings of later palaeolithic men have in some parts of the 

 kingdom yielded a great variety of weapons of stone and of bone, and 

 examples of rudimentary art in incised pictures, but we have discovered 



1 Evans' Ancient Stone Implements (1897), p. 642. 



2 Wood has been found on the palaeolithic ground of the Lea gravels, and may have been used 

 for stakes, clubs, hut roof timbers or other purposes. 



262 



