Tools of our Ancestors 



389 



THE TOOLS OF OUR ANCESTORS. 



It is but very seldom in the investigation of the facts, 

 either as regards natural history or human history, that we 

 can begin at the beginning, but it is always well to let the 

 imagination, under careful guidance, travel back as far as it 

 can. This is emphatically the case in reference to the tools 

 used by our remote ancestors. Man has been defined as 

 a tool-using animal, and, no doubt, an aptitude in the employ- 

 ment of implements constitutes one of the most conspicuous 

 differences between man and the most highly developed of 

 non-human animals. It requires, however, but very little 

 thought to see that it is an arbitrary one, and that it cannot 

 be insisted on. In citing it we have not got at the real 

 beginning. Evidences of intelligent contrivance very closely 

 approaching the use of tools are abundant in many depart- 

 ments of animal life, whilst a certain number of instances 

 of the actual employment of them may with diligence be 

 discovered. 



In our speculations as to the stages of progress onward 

 from the anthropoid ape to the period which history deals 

 with, the imagination has an immense duration of time in 

 which to disport itself, Facts make it convincingly certain 

 that men, as defined by the ability to make and use tools, 

 have existed on the earth, and in lands now a part of England, 

 for a quarter of a million of years. His tools in the form 

 of manufactured stones have been unearthed, which in all 

 probability date as far back as the time we have suggested. 

 No doubt, however, even at that period he had got a fairly 

 large brain, had smoothed down his orbital ridges, rounded 

 his forehead, developed a nose and thrown forward his chin. 

 To what extent his tool-house and his workshop were sup- 

 plied we can never know. We may be almost sure that the 

 very earliest of his implements were of wood and little more 



