386 THE ANIMALS AND MAN 



the scientific men. Some say they show the indubitable 

 crude work of earliest man; others say that their shape 

 and chipped character are due to the fortuitous action of 

 the elements. If these eoliths are of human shaping, the 

 dawn of man's history goes very much farther back than 

 we now know it to go. 



The English anthropologist, Abbott, has lately drawn a 

 word picture, on the basis of his discoveries near Hastings, 

 of a scene from the life of prehistoric man : 



Fig. 189. Vertebra of young reindeer with flint arrowhead imbedded in 

 the bone. From the Cave of Perigord, France. (After Lartel and 

 Christy.) 



"In a comer formed by the cliff face and a projecting 

 fissure wall squatted one of the old fellows chipping away 

 at a flint, a heap of which lay by his side. In his hand was a 

 hard-worn quartzite hammer-stone, one of the most cherished 

 objects of his life. Near him crouched his wife, and possibly 

 offspring, collecting the flakes he struck ofif, and sorting 

 them into little heaps according to the purposes for which 

 they were suitable. . Near him was another old fellow, 

 working away at one of those beautiful bi-concavo-convex 

 ridged-back, finely- worked, round-based, spear tips; he 

 had finished the prize all but one blow, which would have 



