ART AND TACKLE, OLD STONE MEN 17 
demonstrate not only the high point of excellence to which 
the art of the Troglodytes had attained, but also, from the 
absence of perspective and of decorative as compared with 
pictorial composition, indicate how long is probably the 
interval and how far is the separation between them and the 
Men of the Neolithic Age. 
Not only in the character of their Art, which if more 
specialised in subjects was superior in representative quality, 
but also in the substance and in the method of fashioning their 
fishing and hunting implements, the separation between the 
Old Stone and the New Stone Man is very marked. 
The former for their stone implements almost always 
used flint. They worked it to shape merely by flaking or 
chipping. The latter employed also diorite, quartzite, etc., 
and in addition to flaking fashioned them by grinding and 
polishing.! 
It must, I fear, be acknowledged that the caches of the 
New Stone Age fail to give us the help expected towards 
settling what was the first implement employed. It is true 
that they yield hooks, nets, net-sinkers, which may have been 
merely developments of Troglodyte tackle, but, judging from 
the absence of any surviving Paleolithic example, were more 
probably new inventions. 
But neither these nor the implements of succeeding Ages 
furnish us with evidence sufficient to decide the tackle first 
employed by the earliest fisherman, or even by the Old Stone 
Man, for, as Cartailhac truly warns us, ‘‘ Ce n’est pas, comme 
on l’a dit 4 tort, le début de l’art que nous découvrons. L’art 
de l’age du renne est beaucoup trop ancien.”’ 2 
And here it may well be objected, if the New Stone Age 
does not disclose any priority of implement, why further 
pursue what thus must be the insoluble? Why, indeed, 
especially if it be true that their tackle with some additional 
1 The Neolithic stage, some hold, is characterised by the presence of polished 
stone implements and in particular the stone ave, which, judging from its 
perforation, so as to be more effectually fastened to a wooden handle, was 
probably used rather for wood than conflict. T, Peisker, Cambridge Mediaeval 
History, 1911, vol.i., has much of interest on the domestication of this period. 
2 Les Peintuves préhistoviques de la Caverne d’Altamiva, Annales du Musée 
Guimet, Paris, 1904, tome xv. p. 131. 
