Primeval Man in the Valley of the Lea. 
137 
quite plain, with the cone at the base; the cone shows the 
point of impact of the quartzite pebble used in the hand as a 
hammer. The plain side of a flake from Stoke Newington 
Common is illustrated one half actual size at fig. 28 ; the 
other side of such a flake may present either the natural 
crust of the flint, or exhibit a surface with several artificial 
facets, or it may be trimmed and bevelled all over; the 
conchoidal swelling or curve projects towards the spectator 
at a ; four distinct cones are seen at bbbb, and at least six 
points of impact are indicated by the points of the six arrows. 
These six or more cones prove that the flake was not easily 
set free with the hammer 
c O > WPK - 
from the parent block of 
flint, and that it took six or 
more consecutive blows for 
its discharge. Now people 
who think they disbelieve in 
flakes say a round tough 
stone might fall from the top 
of a high cliff on to a brittle 
block of flint on the beach 
below, and set a flake free 
with a bulb of percussion ; or 
that a glacier might force a 
round tough stone against a 
brittle flint with a similar 
effect. Though improbable, 
I acknowledge that such phenomena might happen and 
produce one cone; but who in his senses can imagine the 
round tough stone going up again to the top of the cliff and 
falling down again five or six more times on to the same 
place on the same flint, or a glacier altering its nature 
and receding five or six times to produce five or six 
cones closely adjoining each other? Double, triple, and 
quadruple cones are extremely common, and they distinctly 
prove that a human hand, directed by a human brain, 
delivered the successive blows. 
Palaeolithic implements were probably never mounted in 
Fig. 23. — Plain side of an artificial 
flake, one half actual size. 
