ARTS AND HANDICRAFTS 331 



from the etymological point of view, states that tanning is one 

 of the primitive arts. The hides of the prehistoric men were 

 stitched together with the bone needles so frequently found in 

 palaeolithic deposits. The holes for laces were bored by awls 

 found in the same places, and made of the shin bones of animals ; 

 the so-called sceptres of reindeer horn richly decorated, and 

 provided with a large hole, apparently served to hold their 

 clothes together across the breast. If palaeolithic men also 

 inhabited tropical and subtropical regions, they must have made 

 their clothes of bark, leaves and grasses, as do savage races 

 to-day. 



In the matter of clothes the great contrast between the 

 older and newer periods of the Stone Age is extremely well 

 marked. In the Danish kitchen-middens spinning-wheels are 

 found, and it may be gathered from this that the art of spin- 

 ning (? flax) was by that time known to the neolithic people of 

 the North. The spinning of threads is, however, no special 

 acquisition of man, because, as Brehm points out, the tailor 

 bird (Orthotomus longicanda) stitches together the leaves which 

 form its nest with threads which it spins itself from the raw 

 cotton. It was a longtime before man learned the art of spin- 

 ning, but when he had once acquired it, he at once made great 

 progress, by making his threads into plaits and these again into 

 a woven texture. Such materials made by the antediluvian man 

 we do not actually possess, as they only exist in the indestruct- 

 ible representations of them found in Kesslerloch and the caves 

 of Freudenthaler. It may be doubted, therefore, whether they 

 were made of vegetable fibres, as neither spinning-wheels nor 

 any fragments of such-like fibres belonging to this period have 

 been found. It must be assumed, therefore, that sinews formed 

 the original material for threads, and that with these their 

 garments were held together, as are those of the Eskimos at 

 the present time. We have more certain indications of the 

 use of self-spun flax in the period of pile-buildings, for numerous 

 spinning-wheels have been obtained from the bottom of the 

 lake, as well as plaited and braided work, and also looms and 

 woven material (Fig. 160). The braided work was always the 

 older and simpler, and was followed later by the more com- 

 plicated woven material made on an upright loom, such as is 



