320 



THE HUMAN SPECIES 



such fine pieces of work must have been a task of extraordinary 

 difficulty and probably only an occasional event due to special 

 skill. The delicate shell-like finish, however, does not appear 

 so difficult to attain since the exhibition of the Terra del Fuegians 

 in Europe. It was then seen how they broke off the original 

 rough edge of the splinter of rock, by means of little side strokes 

 with a short, small whalebone, which was somewhat rounded un- 

 derneath. And at the Anthropological Con- 

 gress at Greifswald in 1904, it was shown that 

 it was much quicker to work on a sword-blade 

 with a small, long-handled wooden hammer, 

 using a flint stone as an anvil. The shafts of 

 the spears, lance-heads and arrow-heads were 

 probably fastened on by simply tying them, 

 or by first inserting the head into a piece of 

 split wood and then binding and trying it on, 

 just as do the South Sea Islanders at the 

 present time. 



It is very remarkable that in the village 

 of Brandon in Suffolk, where there is an ancient 

 and prehistoric flint quarry, this industry still 

 flourishes, and that in consequence extremely 

 ancient methods are in use which must most 

 assuredly be referred to remote ages. The 

 flint quarries were so arranged that the quarry- 

 man first dug five or six feet deep and then 

 two and a half to three feet horizontally and 

 then again deepened his pit about eight feet. 

 In this manner he dug both in a horizontal 

 and perpendicular direction until he came to 

 a layer of flint. At the present time he adopts 

 exactly the same methods as of old, when 

 ropes, buckets and pulleys were unknown, and the flints had 

 to be brought to the surface step by step. When the flints 

 have been brought up they are first spread out to dry and 

 then cut into prism-shaped blades, which when split diagon- 

 ally form the well-known flint instruments still used in Asia 

 and Africa. Most of the tools and weapons of antediluvian 

 man were made of flints, but he did not disdain the use of 



FIG. 144. Flint 



knife of the 



La Madeleine 



type. (Hor- 



. nes.) 



