8 ANCESTRAL MAN. 



razors made of steel. It is practically indestructible. It is of a 

 wonderful hardness. Stones on which bronze produces no effect, 

 can be cut with flint. Even granite can be carved with a flint 

 tool ; and Captain Cook found that the New Zealanders were able 

 to make holes through glass with their silicious drills. 



The readiest natural instrument was a stone, such as a monkey 

 uses in cracking a nut. The simplest artificial stone implement 

 was made by splitting, with a single blow, a flint pebble. By this 

 means a cutting edge was obtained with the least amount of 

 trouble and skill. The next advance was a weapon wrought by 

 knocking off splinters from the small end of a massive egg-shaped 

 nodule, so as to produce a rude semblance of a point. 



Later artificers were able, by a series of well designed and 

 dexterous blows to strike off from a piece of flint, a number of 

 shapely flakes, suitable for implements. When this had been 

 accomplished, what remained of the nodule was its useless centre. 

 This is called a " core," and the presence in any place of such 

 cores, if they are unweathered and unrolled, indicates the site of 

 an ancient manufactory of flint implements. 



In some cases the preliminary chippings were so well planned 

 that the final blow both completed the weapon and separated it 

 from the nodule. It was thus ready for use, as a knife, spear-head 

 or arrow-tip, without further treatment. In other cases, flakes 

 were subsequently trimmed to serve as awls, graving-tools, 

 scrapers and drills. 



But to strike off flakes from flint is no easy thing. Indeed, Sir 

 John Lubbock was told by a gun-flint maker that it took him two 

 years to learn the art, while to work the splinters into implements 

 requires great skill and long practice. 



It is quite certain that flakes and chippings of this kind cannot 

 be produced by any of the inanimate forces of nature. Neither 

 frost nor fire, neither the rolling of a glacier nor the violence of 

 waves can occasion in flint the curious conchoidal fracture and 

 the characteristic bulb of percussion that are caused by the well 

 directed stroke of a tool-wright. So that no matter where such 

 flakes are found, we are compelled to believe that they were the 

 product of a skill that could have been gained only by patient 

 perseverance. 



The manufacture of long and shapely spear-points, of barbed 

 arrow-heads, of grooved or perforated celts, and the beautiful 

 polish which many of these weapons received, were the per- 

 formance of later and more accomplished workmen. 



It is easy to understand, as all incisive and durable instruments 

 were made of silicious stones, that these were held in high esteem, 

 and that their very name was synonymous with strength and 

 majesty. An implement like a mace, armed with a cluster of 



