Primitive Man Part 16

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 101.--Another Stone Saw from Denmark.]

We must now turn our attention to instruments made of bone or stag's horn. They are much less numerous than those of stone, and have nothing about them of a very remarkable character. The only implement that is worthy of notice is the harpoon (fig. 102). It is a carved bone, and furnished with teeth all along one side, the other edge being completely smooth. The harpoon of the reindeer epoch was decidedly superior to it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 102.--Bone Harpoon of the Stone Age from Denmark.]

On account of its singularity, we must not omit to mention an object made of bone, composed of a wide flat plate, from which spring seven or eight teeth of considerable length, and placed very close together; there is a kind of handle, much narrower, and terminating in a k.n.o.b, like the top of a walking-stick. This is probably one of the first combs which ever unravelled the thickly-grown heads of hair of primitive man.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 103.--Bone Comb from Denmark.]

It is a well-known fact that amber is very plentiful on the coasts of the Baltic. Even in the Stone Age, it was already much appreciated by the northern tribes, who used to make necklaces of it, either by merely perforating the rough morsels of amber and stringing them in a row, or by cutting them into spherical or elliptical beads, as is the case nowadays.

Fig. 104 represents a necklace and also various other ornaments made of yellow amber, which have been drawn from specimens in the Museum of Saint-Germain.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 104.--Necklace and various Ornaments of Amber.]

Although these northern tribes of the polished-stone epoch were such skilful workmen in flint, they were, nevertheless, but poor hands at pottery. The _debris_ of vessels collected from the Danish _kitchen-middens_, and also from the peat-bogs and tombs, are in every way rough, and testify to a very imperfect knowledge of the art of moulding clay. They may be said to mark the first efforts of a manufacturing art which is just springing into existence, which is seeking for the right path, although not, as yet, able to find it. The art of pottery (if certain relics be relied on) was more advanced at a more ancient period, that is, during the reindeer epoch.

We have already stated that during the reindeer epoch there existed certain manufactories of weapons and tools, the productions of which were distributed all round the adjacent districts, although over a somewhat restricted circle. In the epoch at which we have now arrived, certain _workshops_--for really this is the proper name to give them--acquired a remarkable importance, and their relations became of a much more extensive character. In several of the Belgian caves, flints have been found which must have come from the celebrated workshop of Grand-Pressigny, situated in that part of the present France which forms the department of Indre-et-Loire, and, from their very peculiar character, are easily recognisable. Commerce and manufacture had then emerged from their merely rudimentary state, and were entering into a period of activity implying a certain amount of civilisation.

The great principle of division of labour had already been put into practice, for there were special workshops both for the shaping and polishing of flints.

The most important of all the workshops which have been noticed in France is, unquestionably, that of Grand-Pressigny, which we have already mentioned. It was discovered by Dr. Leveille, the medical man of the place; but, to tell the truth, it is not so much in itself a centre of manufacture as a series of workshops distributed in the whole neighbourhood round Pressigny.

At the time of this discovery, that is in 1864, flints were found in thousands imbedded in the vegetable mould on the surface of the soil, over a superficies of 12 to 14 acres. The Abbe Chevalier, giving an account of this curious discovery to the _Academie des Sciences_ at Paris, wrote: "It is impossible to walk a single step without treading on some of these objects."

The workshops of Grand-Pressigny furnish us with a considerable variety of instruments. We find hatchets in all stages of manufacture, from the roughest attempt up to a perfectly polished weapon. We find, also, long flakes or flint-knives cleft off with a single blow with astonishing skill.

All these objects, even the most beautiful among them, are nevertheless defective in some respect or other; hence it may be concluded that they were the refuse thrown aside in the process of manufacture. In this way may be explained the acc.u.mulation of so many of these objects in the same spot.

There were likewise narrow and elongated points forming a kind of piercer, perfectly wrought; also sc.r.a.pers, and saws of a particular type which seem to have been made in a special workshop. They are short and wide, and have at each end a medial slot intended to receive a handle.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 105.--Nucleus in the Museum of Saint-Germain, from the Workshop of Grand-Pressigny.]

But the objects which are the most numerous of all, and those which obviate any doubt that Pressigny was once an important centre of the manufacture of flint, are the _nuclei_ (fig. 105), or the remnants of the lump of flint, from which the large blades known under the name of knives were cleft off. Some of these lumps which we have seen in the Museum of St. Germain were as much as 11 and 13 inches in length; but the greater part did not exceed 7 inches. The labourers of Touraine, who often turn up these flints with their plough-shares, call them _pounds of b.u.t.ter_, looking at the similarity of shape. At the present day these _nuclei_ are plentiful in all the collections of natural history and geology.

A strange objection has been raised against the antiquity of the hatchets, knives, and weapons found at Pressigny. M. Eugene Robert has a.s.serted that these flints were nothing else but the refuse of the siliceous ma.s.ses which, at the end of the last century and especially at the beginning of the present, were used in the manufacture of gun-flints!

The Abbe Bourgeois, M. Penguilly l'Haridon, and Mr. John Evans did not find much difficulty in proving the slight foundation there was for this criticism. In the department of Loire-et-Cher, in which the gun-flint manufacture still exists, the residue from the process bears no resemblance whatever to the _nuclei_ of Pressigny; the fragments are much less in bulk, and do not present the same constantly-occurring and regular shapes. Added to this, they are never chipped at the edges, like a great number of the flakes coming from the workshops of Touraine.

But another and altogether peremptory argument is that the flints of Pressigny-le-Grand are unfitted, on account of the texture, for the manufacture of gun-flints. Moreover, the records of the Artillery Depot, as remarked by M. Penguilly l'Haridon, librarian of the Artillery Museum, do not make mention of the locality of Pressigny having ever been worked for this purpose. Lastly, the oldest inhabitants of the commune have testified that they never either saw or heard of any body of workmen coming into the district to work flints. M. Eugene Robert's hypothesis, which MM. Decaisne and Elie de Beaumont thought right to patronise, is, therefore, as much opposed to facts as to probability.

Very few polished flints are found in the workshops of Pressigny-le-Grand; it is, therefore, imagined that their existence commenced before the polished-stone epoch. According to this idea, the _nuclei_ would belong to a transitional epoch between the period of chipped stone, properly so called, and that of polished stone. The first was just coming to an end, but the second had not actually commenced. In other words, most of the Pressigny flints have the typical shapes and style of cutting peculiar to the polished-stone age, but the polishing is wanting.

This operation was not practised in the workshops of Pressigny until some considerable period after they were founded, and were already in full operation. In the neighbourhood of this locality a number of polishers have been found of a very remarkable character. They are large blocks of sandstone (fig. 106), furrowed all over, or only on a portion of their surface, with grooves of various depths, in which objects might be polished by an energetic friction.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 106.--Polisher from Grand-Pressigny, both faces being shown.]

Some polishers of the same kind, which have been found in various departments, are rather different from the one we have just named. Thus, one specimen which was found by M. Leguay in the environs of Paris, in the burial-places of Varenne-Saint-Hilaire, of which we give a representation further on, is provided not only with grooves but also hollows of a basin-like shape, and of some little depth.

The polishing of the flints was carried into effect by rubbing them against the bottom of these hollows, which were moistened by water, and no doubt contained siliceous dust of a harder nature than the stone which had to be polished.

We must here pause for a moment to remark that all these operations which were carried out by our ancestors in fashioning the flint could not fail to have presented certain difficulties, and must have required a remarkable development of intelligence and skill.

Working flints into shape, which appears at first sight a very simple matter, is, however, a rather complicated operation, on account of the properties of this mineral substance and the beds in which it lies.

In its natural state the flint presents itself in the shape of nearly round lumps, which are brittle, but nevertheless very hard, and which, like gla.s.s, can be split in any direction by a blow, so as to furnish scales with sharp edges. In consequence of this circ.u.mstance, all that would be requisite in order to produce sharp objects is to cleave off flakes in the shape of a knife or poniard, by striking a flint, held in the left hand, with another and harder flint or hammer. Instead of holding in the left hand the flint which was to be wrought, it might also be placed on a rest and, being held fast with the left hand, suitable blows might be applied to the stone.

We must not, however, omit to mention, that to enable the flint to be cut up into sharp splinters and to be broken in any desired direction, it is necessary for it to have been very recently extracted from the bosom of the earth; it must possess the humidity which is peculiar to it, with which it is impregnated when in its natural bed. If pieces of flint are exposed to the open air they cannot afterwards be readily broken with any degree of regularity; they then afford nothing but shapeless and irregular chips, of an entirely different character from that which would be required in fashioning them. This moisture was well known to the workmen who used to manufacture the gun-flints, and was called the _quarry damp_.

The necessity that the flint should be wrought when newly extracted from the earth, and that the stones should only be dug just in proportion as they were wanted, brought about as a proximate result the creation and working of mines and quarries, which are thus almost as ancient as humanity itself. Being unable to make use of flints which had been dried in the air, and consequently rendered unfit for being wrought, the workmen were compelled to make excavations, and to construct galleries, either covered or exposed to the open air, to employ wooden battening, sh.o.r.es, supports; in short, to put in use the whole plant which is required for working a stone-quarry. As, in order not to endanger the lives of the labourers, it was found necessary to prevent any downfalls, they were induced to follow out a certain methodical system in their excavations, by giving a sufficient thickness to the roofs of the galleries, by sinking shafts, by building breast-walls, and by adopting the best plan for getting out the useless _detritus_. When, as was often the case, water came in so as to hinder the miners, it was necessary to get rid of it in order that the workmen should not be drowned. It was also sometimes requisite that the galleries and the whole system of underground ways should be supplied with air.

Thus their labour in fashioning the flint must have led our ancestors to create the art of working quarries and mines.

It has been made a subject of inquiry, how the tribes of the Stone Age could produce, without the aid of any iron tool, the holes which are found in the flints; and how they could perforate these same flints so as to be able to fit in handles for the hatchets, poniards, and knives; in fact, lapidaries of the present day cannot bore through gun-flints without making use of diamond dust. We are of opinion that the _bow_, which was employed by primitive man in producing fire by rubbing wood against wood, was also resorted to in the workshops for manufacturing stone implements and weapons for giving a rapid revolving motion to a flint drill which was sufficient to perforate the stone. Certain experiments which have been made in our own day with very sharp arrow-heads which belonged to primitive man have proved that it is thus very possible to pierce fresh flints, if the action of the drill is a.s.sisted by the addition of some very hard dust which is capable of increasing the bite of the instrument. This dust or powder, consisting of corundum or zircon, might have been found without any great difficulty by the men of the Stone Age. These substances are, in fact, to be met with on the banks of rivers, their presence being betrayed by the golden spangles which glitter in the sand.

Thus the flint-drill, a.s.sisted by one of these powders, was quite adequate for perforating siliceous stones. When it is brought to our knowledge that the workmen of the Black Forest thus bore into Bohemian granite in less than a minute, we shall not feel inclined to call this explanation in question.[19]

Fig. 107 attempts to give a representation of the workshop at

Pressigny for shaping and polishing flints--in other words, a manufacturing workshop of the polished-stone epoch.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 107.--The earliest Manufacture and Polishing of Flints.]

In this sketch we have depicted the polisher found by M. Leguay, of which we give a representation in fig. 108. In this picture it was indispensable for us to show the operation of polishing, for the latter is a characteristic of the epoch of mankind which we are now describing, that is, the polished-stone period. It must, in fact, be remarked that during the epoch of the great bear and the mammoth, and the reindeer epoch, stone instruments were not polished, they were purely and simply flakes or fragments of stone. During the epoch at which we have now arrived, a great improvement took place in this kind of work, and stone instruments were polished. It is therefore essential to call attention to the latter operation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 108.--Polisher found by M. Leguay.]

We think we ought to quote here the brief account M. Leguay has given of the polisher represented in our figure. In his 'Note sur une Pierre a polir les Silex trouvee en Septembre, 1860, a la Varenne-Saint-Hilaire (Seine),' M. Leguay thus writes:--

"Amongst the many monuments of the Stone Age which I have collected at Varenne-Saint-Hilaire, on the site of the ancient settlement which once existed there, there is one which has always struck me, not only by its good state of preservation, but also by the revelations which it affords us as to one of the princ.i.p.al manufactures of these tribes--the fabrication of flint weapons and utensils.

"This object is a stone for polishing and fashioning the finest kind of hatchets. I discovered it in September, 1860, at a spot called _La Pierre au Pretre_, along with several other monuments of primitive art which I intend before long to make public. This stone is a rough sandstone of cubical shape, showing no trace whatever of having been hewn. It is 13 inches in its greatest thickness, and measures 37 inches long by 21 wide, and, just as in many boulders, one of its faces is well adapted to the use for which it was employed.

"This is the face which was used for many long years for rubbing and polishing the weapons made in the place, the remains of which are still found in small quant.i.ties in the neighbourhood, and abound in the burial-places, where they have been deposited as votive offerings.

"Almost the whole of its surface is occupied. In the centre is a basin presenting an oval surface 25 inches the long way, and 12 inches the narrow way. The stone, which has been considerably worn away in consequence of long use, has been rubbed off to a central depth of about 1 inch; this portion must have been used for rubbing the larger objects after they had been roughly shaped by chipping. The length of the basin allowed a motion of considerable length to be given to the stone which was being worked, at the same time giving facilities to the workman for the exercise of all his strength. Added to this, this cavity enabled the almond-like shape to be given to the objects--a form which they nearly all present.

"Either in front or to the right, according to the position in which the observer stands, and almost touching the edge of this basin, there is a hole deeply hollowed in the stone, being 30 inches long; it extends along almost the whole length of the sandstone, with the maximum breadth of about 1 inch, and presents the shape of a very elongated spindle hollowed out to a depth of something less than half an inch in the centre, which tapers off to nothing at the two ends.

"The wear of the stone and the shape of this groove point out its intention. It must have been used to reduce the edges or the sides of the hatchet, which after the chipping and flat polishing were left either too thick or too sharp for a handle to be easily fitted to them.

Added to this, it smoothed down the roughnesses caused by chipping, which it replaced by a round form of no great thickness, which was again and again rubbed flatly on the stone to give it a square and sharp-edged level. This last operation took place in a basin, and it gave to the hatchet a curve in a lengthwise direction which is by no means ungraceful.

"The thinning off of the edges of the groove was not an immaterial matter. It not only a.s.sisted in forming the above-named curve, but also prevented the cutting edge being distorted, and avoided the need of subsequent repolishing, which spoiled the object by rubbing it away too much.

"It must not be for a moment imagined that the edge of the hatchet was made in this groove. Examination proves the contrary, and that it was done flatwise while polishing the rest of the object; and if sometimes its thickness did not allow this, it was preliminarily done, and then finished in the general polishing.

"But although this basin, and its accompanying groove, on account of their dimensions, acted very well for polishing the large hatchets, the case was different with the smaller ones. This is the reason why two other smaller basins, and also a small groove, were made on the flat part of the stone by the side of the others.