158 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF [lect. 



a large tumulus, the erection of which must have been 

 extremely laborious, it is evident that it must have been 

 erected in honour of some distinguished individual ; and 

 when his flint daggers, axes, &c. — which, from the labour 

 and difficulty of making them, must have been of great 

 value — were deposited in the tomb, it is reasonable to 

 conclude that if he had possessed any arms of metal, 

 they also would have been buried with him. This we 

 know was done in subsequent periods. In burials of the 

 Stone Age the corpse was either deposited in a sitting 

 posture, or burnt, but rarely, if ever, extended at full 

 length, i 



8. It is an error to suppose that the rudest flint 

 implements are necessarily the oldest. The Palaeolithic 

 implements show admirable workmanship. Moreover, 

 every flint instrument is rude at first. A bronze celt 

 may be cast perfect ; but a flint implement is rudely 

 blocked out in the first instance, and then, if any con- 

 cealed flaw comes to light, or if any ill- directed blow 

 causes an inconvenient fracture, the unfinished imple- 

 ment is perhaps thrown away. Moreover, the simplest 

 flint-flake forms a capital knife, and accordingly we find 

 that some simple stone implements were in use long 

 after metal had replaced the beautifully-worked axes, 

 knives, and daggers, which must always have been 

 very difficult to make. The period immediately before 

 the introduction of metal may reasonably be supposed to 

 be that of the best stone implements, but the use of the 



1 For accounts of tumuli belonging to this period see Hoare's 

 Ancient Wiltshire, Nilsson's Stone Age, Warne's Ancient Dorset, 

 Bateman's Antiquities of Derbyshire, and Ten Years' Diggings, 

 Borlase's Nenia Cornubice, Greenwell's British Barrows, &c. 



