104 Primceval Man in the Valley of the Lea. 
old river-terraces, tlie weapons and other instruments of 
stone are disinterred with the excavated material. These 
implements of flint are veritable “ sermons in stones”; they 
picture facts to us that it is impossible to question, and they 
give us outlines, sometimes very plain and sometimes very 
dim, of the men who made and used them. 
After these preliminary remarks, I will proceed to say 
where the Paleolithic tools are to be found in the Lea Valley. 
I will then describe the tools themselves, their positions in 
the gravels, and some of the objects commonly found in 
association with them; and lastly, I will glance at the 
probable or possible cultural status of the men who made the 
instruments. 
The localities for Palaeolithic implements in the Lea Valley 
are very numerous. If we restrict ourselves to the district 
running north of the present point of confluence of the Lea 
with the Thames to Cheshunt, we find on the west bank of 
the Lea a vast deposit of river-gravel about fifteen miles long. 
Now towards the top of the whole of this long bank of gravel 
there was in remote times a large cohort of Paleolithic men; 
for on every part of this terrace (in the higher positions) from 
the Thames to beyond Cheshunt the tools and flakes of the 
ancient river-side men abound. There is far less gravel on 
the Essex side of the Lea, but wherever the higher gravel is 
there also are the buried tools of primaeval man and the fossil 
bones of the animals that lived at the same time with him. 
Before I proceed to distinctly point out the exact spots 
where Palaeolithic implements are invariably found, it may 
perhaps be well to indicate the positions where they are not 
to be found, for if search is not made in the right variety of 
gravel, or in the right places belonging to that gravel, one 
may look for years and never light on a flake. In the 
first place, then, it is almost useless to examine the gravels 
on the hill-tops, or such gravels as are found at Buckhurst 
Hill, for these are generally glacial in age and supposed to be 
unproductive of implements. Personally, I may say that I 
consider the subject of the unproductiveness of glacial gravels, 
as regards implements, to be a question that requires further 
