ANCESTRAL MAN. 



23 



the flints of the drift, and even from the chert ; and as the supply 

 grew gradually scarcer and the material more precious, their 

 implements would be made progressively smaller. Acquiring, 

 in time, a considerable skill, they would make simple arrow-tips, 

 and delicate fish-throttles, and may have struggled for ages against 

 adverse circumstances only to be slain at last by the polished 

 battle axes and barbed arrows of Neolithic troops. 



And the question arises whether such remnants constituted the 

 feeble folk who camped and clustered on the summits of hills, in 

 various parts of England, that had not been submerged. 



On some of the shoulders, for instance, of the Pennine range, 

 of an altitude of not less than perhaps 1,000 feet, under layers 

 consisting of about twelve inches of peat, and, beneath this, of 

 about four inches of peaty clay ; in a grey, sandy subsoil, full of 

 carbonaceous markings of rootlets and silicious remains of grass, 

 the present writer has dug up a number of flakes, cores and 

 chippings. A large proportion of the latter exhibit some part of 

 the original surface of the flint nodule, and this is, in nearly every 

 instance, pebbled or water-worn ; showing that the nodule was not 

 obtained directly from the chalk. Whenever, in a suitable place, 

 the grey subsoil was carefully uncovered, implements and frag- 

 ments of flint alone were found in its lower portion, but flint 

 mingled with chert fragments in its upper portion ; indicating 

 that chert was resorted to as flint became increasingly scarce. 

 Not one of the implements, in the slightest degree, is polished. 

 The very floor on which these ancient tool-wrights sat, the fire by 

 which they were warmed and the iron pyrites they used to kindle 

 it, the reddle which stained their bodies, and all the waste of their 

 manufacture, have been laid bare. Hammer-stones, cores, flakes, 

 scrapers, arrow-tips, spear-tips, all of a small size, as well as minute 

 implements such as awls, gravers, perhaps tattooing instruments, 

 and, possibly, fish-throttles. Things such as these have been 



Stone fish-throttle, found in 

 the Swiss Lake Dwellings. 



cS O 



bo 



Supposed fish-throttle of 

 flint found near Rochdale. 



