THE PLEISTOCENE OR GLACIAL PERIOD. 



503 



properly regard "paleolithic" and "neolithic" merely as stages of early 

 art, and not as chronological "ages," or geologic divisions, but the 

 terms have been much used in the latter sense. 



The relics interpreted as paleoliths consist chiefly of rudely chipped 

 pieces of flint, chert, quartz, or quartzite (Fig. 567). With these are 

 associated other products of early art. The neoliths embrace a wider 

 range of stone artefacs, which may be briefly typified for our purpose 

 by the familiar well-chipped arrow-points, spear-heads, knives, and 

 scrapers of flint or quartz, and by the ground and polished axes, chisels, 

 pestles, mortars, and other implements of greenstone and sinnlar 



Fig. 567. — At the left, a typical paleolith from Kent's Cavern, Torquay, England, 

 seen on the face and edge. At the right, a bone pin or bodkin, a broken needle, 

 and a barbed harpoon head, also from Kent's Cavern. (After Evans.) 



tough or workable rock. The ruder class were confidently inter- 

 preted as the work of an earlier and less cultured people, while the 

 better class were known to have been the customary implements 

 and weapons of the natives of the continent when first invaded by 

 Europeans. Stone h ammers have been found in abundance in the ancient 

 copper mines of the Lake Superior region, and thus the use of stone 

 and of copper implements is shown to have been contemporaneous; but 

 this was long after the retreat of the last ice-sheet, and does not espe- 

 cially concern us here, except as it serves to emphasize the contem- 

 poraneity of different forms of art. It is helpful also to note that 

 the phase of the stone art designated neolithic was dominant on the 

 continent until very recent times, and is scarcely yet extinct, and that 



