98 GEOLOGY OF THE ISLE OF WIGHT 



made of chert, but it is far more difficult to work, as it 

 naturally breaks in an irregular way into sharp angular 

 fragments. Flint, on the other hand, lent itself admirably 

 to the use of early man, who in time acquired a perfect 

 mastery of the material. The working of flints is so 

 characteristic that, once accustomed to them, you cannot 

 mistake a good specimen. Sea waves dashing pebbles 

 about will sometimes produce a conchoidal fracture, but 

 never a series of fractures in the methodical way in which 

 a flint was worked by man. And, of course, specimens 

 may be found so worn that it is difficult to be sure about 

 their nature. Again early man may, especially in very 

 early times, have been content to use a sharp stone almost 

 as he found it, with only the slightest amount of knocking 

 it into shape. So that in such a case it will be very 

 difficult to decide whether the stones have formed the 

 implements of man or not. In later times men learnt to 

 polish their implements, and made polished stone axes 

 like those the New Zealanders and South Sea Islanders 

 used to make in modern times. The old age of chipped or 

 flaked implements is called the Palaeolithic ; the later age 

 when they were ground or polished the Neolithic. (Simple 

 implements, as knives and scrapers, were still unpolished.) 

 The history of early man is a long story in itself, and of 

 intense interest. But we must not leave our geological 

 story unfinished by leaving out the culmination of it all 

 in man. In the higher gravels the Plateau Gravels 

 no remains of man are found ; but in the lower the 

 Valley Gravels, of the South of England is found abun- 

 dant evidence of the presence of man. Large numbers of 

 flint implements have been collected from the Thames valley 

 and over the whole area of the rivers which have gravel 

 terraces along their course. Over a large sheet of gravel 

 at Southampton, whenever a large gravel pit is dug, im- 

 plements are found at the base of the gravel.* The 

 * Mr. W. Dale, F.S.A. 



