208 RIGHTHANDEDNESS. 



Neolithic age; and the bone implements which specially attract our 

 interest now, fully accord with such a classification. In clearing out 

 one of the subterranean galleries excavated in the chalk, it was found 

 that " the roof had given way about the middle of the gallery, and 

 blocked up the whole width of it. On removing this, it was seen that 

 the flint had been worked out in three places at the end, forming three 

 hollows, extending beyond the chalk face of the end of the gallery." 

 In front of two of these hollows lay two picks, corresponding to others 

 found in various parts of the shafts and galleries, made from the antler 

 of the red deer. But in this case the writer notes that the handle of 

 each was laid towards the mouth of the gallery, the tines, which formed 

 the blades of the tools, pointing towards each other, " showing, in all 

 probability, that they had been used respectively by a right and a left- 

 handed man. The day's work over, the men had laid down each his 

 tool, ready for the nest day's work ; meanwhile the roof had fallen in, 

 and the picks had never been recovered." 



The picks thus made from the antlers of the red deer were con- 

 structed simply by detaching the horn at a distance of about sixteen 

 or seventeen inches from the brow end, and then breaking off all but 

 the large brow-tine, with the help of fire and rude cutting implements 

 of flint. They had been used both as picks and hammers, the point 

 of the brow-tine serving for a pick, and the broad flat part opposite to 

 it as a hammer, for breaking off and detaching the flint from the 

 chalk ; while excavations through the solid chalk were effected by 

 means of hatchets of basalt. The marks of both tools were abundant 

 on the walls of the galleries ; and many of the rude picks^ including 

 the two specially referred to, were coated with an incrustation of chalk, 

 bearing the impress of the workmen's fingers. Unfortunately this 

 evidence, although so distinct as to show the print of the skin most 

 apparent, does not appear to have been appealed to as the conclusive 

 test of the right and left-handed workmen, by .whom they were employed 

 at the close of that last day's labour, in the prehistoric dawn. Here, 

 however, the evidence, so far as it goes, leaves the right and left-handed 

 workmen of that remote era with no determinate preference either way. 



But one test of a very reliable kind proves the recognition of right- 

 handedness among races in as primitive a condition as the rudest of 

 the flint folk of Europe's dawn. Even among the degraded Austra- 

 lians, and the Pacific Islanders, terms for right, the right-hand 

 or approximate expressions, show a familiarity with the distinction. 



