Primitive Man Part 17

"These two basins were placed at two corners of the face of the stone, but still parallel to the larger basin and also to the larger groove, so as to be convenient for the requirements of the workman engaged in polishing without compelling him to shift his position; one is 10 inches, and the other 13 inches in length, with a mean breadth of about 2-1/2 inches. They are both in the shape of a rather narrow almond, and end almost in a point, which seems to show that they also were used in polishing somewhat narrow objects--perhaps to set right the edges of hatchets, in which the rubbing in the larger basin had produced cavities prejudicial to the perfection of the faces.

"The small groove, placed very near the larger one, is 9 inches long. It is the same shape as the other, but is not so deep, and scarcely half an inch wide.

"Not far from the end of this latter groove, at the point where it approaches the larger one, there are traces of a groove scarcely commenced.

"Lastly, the flat portions of the stone which are not occupied by the basins and grooves, were sometimes used for touching up the polish, or even for smoothing various objects.

"Thus, as we see, this polishing-stone, which is one of the most complete in existence, has on it three basins of different sizes, two well-defined grooves, and one only just sketched out. It would serve for finishing off all the instruments that could be required; but, nevertheless, two other sandstones of moderate size were found near it; one round, and the other of a spindle-like shape; these, which were worn and rubbed all over their surfaces, must also have been used in polishing objects.

"Finding these stones was, however, a thing of frequent occurrence in several spots of this locality, where I often met with them; they were of all sizes and all shapes, and perfectly adapted for polishing small flints, needles, and the cutting edges of knives, deposited with them in the sepulchres.

"This polishing-stone, which is thickly covered with _dendrites_ or incrustations, must have been in use at the time it was abandoned. I found it about 2 feet below the surface of the soil, in which it was turned upside down; that is, the basin lay next the earth. The few monuments that were with it--one among which I looked upon as an idol roughly carved in a block of sandstone--were all likewise turned upside down. There had been sepulchres in the neighbourhood, but they had been violated; and the displaced stones, as well as the bones themselves, only served to point out the presence of the former burial-place."

The polishing of stone instruments was effected by rubbing the object operated upon in a cavity hollowed out in the centre of the polisher, in which cavity a little water was poured, mixed with zircon or corundum powder, or, perhaps, merely with oxide of iron, which is used by jewellers in carrying out the same operation.

It is really surprising to learn what an enormous quant.i.ty of flints could be prepared by a single workman, provided with the proper utensils. For information on this point, it is requisite to know what could be done by our former flint-workers in the departments of Indre and Loire-et-Cher, who are, in fact, the descendants of the workmen of the Stone Age. Dolomieu, a French naturalist, desired at the beginning of the century to acquaint himself with the quant.i.ty which these workmen could produce, and at the same time to thoroughly understand the process which they employed in manufacturing gun-flints.

By visiting the workshops of the flint-workers, M. Dolomieu ascertained that the first shape which the workmen gave to the flint was that of a many-sided prism. In the next place, five or six blows with the hammer, which were applied in a minute, were sufficient to cleave off from the ma.s.s certain fragments as exact in shape, with faces as smooth, outlines as straight, and angles as sharp, as if the stone had been wrought by a lapidary's wheel--an operation which, in the latter case, would have required an hour's handiwork. All that was requisite, says Dolomieu, is that the stones should be fresh, and devoid of flaws or heterogeneous matter. When operating upon a good kind of flint, freshly extracted from the ground, a workman could prepare 1000 proper flakes of flint in a day, turning out 500 gun-flints, so that in three days he would perfectly finish 1000 ready for sale. In 1789, the Russian army was furnished with gun-flints from Poland. The manufactory was established at Kisniew. At this period, according to Dolomieu, 90,000 of these gun-flints were made in two months.

Besides those at Grand-Pressigny, some other pre-historic workshops have been pointed out in France. We may mention those of Charente, discovered by M. de Rochebrune; also those of Poitou, and lastly, the field of Diorieres, at Chauvigny (Loire-et-Cher), which appears to have been a special workshop for polishing flint instruments. There is, in fact, not far from Chauvigny, in the same department, a rock on which twenty-five furrows, similar to those in the polishing-stones, are still visible; on which account the inhabitants of the district have given it the name of the "Scored Rock." It is probable that this rock was used for polishing the instruments which were sculptured at Diorieres.

The same kind of open-air workshops for the working of flints have also been discovered in Belgium.

The environs of Mons are specially remarkable in this respect. At Spiennes, particularly, there can be no doubt that an important manufactory of wrought flints existed during the polished-stone epoch. A considerable number of hatchets and other implements have been found there; all of them being either unfinished, defective, or scarcely commenced. We here give a representation (fig. 109) of a spear-head which came from this settlement.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 109.--Spear-head from Spiennes.]

Sometimes these workshops were established in caverns, and not in the open air. We are told this by M. J. Fournet, a naturalist of Lyons, in his work ent.i.tled, 'Influence du Mineur sur la Civilisation.'

"For a very long time past," says M. Fournet, "the caves of Mentone had been known to the inhabitants of the district, on account of the acc.u.mulation of _debris_ contained in them, a boxful of which were sent to Paris, before 1848, by the Prince of Monaco; the contents of it, however, were never subjected to any proper explanation. Since this date, M. Grand, of Lyons, to whom I am indebted for a collection of specimens from these caves, carefully made several excavations, by which he was enabled to ascertain that the most remarkable objects are only to be met with at a certain depth in the clayey deposit with which the soil of these caves is covered. All the instruments are rough and rudimentary in their character, and must, consequently, be a.s.signed to the first commencement of the art. Nevertheless, among the flints some agates were found, which, in my opinion, certainly came from the neighbourhood of Frejus; and with them also some pieces of hyaline quartz in the shape of prisms terminated by their two ordinary pyramids. We have a right to suppose that these crystals, which resembled the _Meylan diamonds_ found near Gren.o.ble, did not come there by chance, and that their sharp points, when fixed in a handle and acting as drills, were used for boring holes in stone."

Flint was not, however, the only substance used during this epoch in the manufacture of stone-hatchets, instruments and tools. In the caves of France, Belgium and Denmark a considerable number of hatchets have been found, made of gneiss, diorite, ophite, fibrolite, jade, and various other very hard mineral substances, which were well adapted to the purpose required and the use to which they were put.

Among the most remarkable we may mention several jade hatchets which were found in the department of Gers, and ornamented with small hooks on each side of the edge. One of these beautiful jade hatchets (fig. 110), the delineation of which is taken from the specimen in the Museum of Saint-Germain, was found in the department of Seine-et-Oise; it has a sculptured ridge in the middle of each face.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 110.--Polished Jade Hatchet in the Museum of Saint-Germain.]

But neither flint, gneiss, nor diorite exist in every country. For these stones some less hard substance was then subst.i.tuted. In Switzerland the instruments and tools were generally made of pebbles which had been drifted down by the streams. They were fashioned by breaking them with other stones, by rubbing them on sandstone, or by sawing them with toothed blades of flint according to their cohesive nature.

In some localities also objects of large size were made of serpentine, basalts, lavas, jades, and other rocks chosen on account of their extreme cohesiveness.

Manual skill had, however, attained such a pitch of perfection among the workmen of this period, in consequence of their being habituated to one exclusive kind of labour, that the nature of the stone became a matter of indifference to them. The hammer, with the proper use of which our workmen are almost unacquainted, was a marvellous instrument in the hands of our ancestors; with it they executed prodigies of workmanship, which seem as if they ought to have been reserved for the file and grindstone of the lapidary of the present day.

We shall not, perhaps, surprise our readers if we add that as certain volcanic lavas, especially obsidian, fracture with the same regularity and the same facility as the flint, obsidian was employed by the natives of America as a material for making sharp instruments. The ancient quarries whence the Indians procured this rock for the manufacture of instruments and tools, were situate at the _Cerro de Navajas_--that is, the _Mountain of Knives_--in Mexico. M. H. de Saussure, the descendant of the great geologist, was fortunate enough to meet with, at this spot, pieces of mineral which had merely been begun upon, and allowed a series of double-edged blades to be subsequently cut off them; these were always to be obtained by a simple blow skilfully applied. According to M. H. de Saussure, the first fashioning of these implements was confined to producing a large six-sided prism, the vertical corners of which were regularly and successively hewn off, until the piece left, or _nucleus_, became too small for the operation to be further continued.

Hernandez, the Spanish historian, states that he has seen 100 blades an hour manufactured in this way. Added to this, the ancient aborigines of Peru, and the Guanches of Teneriffe, likewise carved out of obsidian both darts and poniards. And, lastly, we must not omit to mention that M. Place, one of the explorers of Nineveh, found on the site of this ancient city, knives of obsidian, supposed to be used for the purpose of circ.u.mcision.

Having considered the flint instruments peculiar to the polished-stone epoch, we must now turn our attention to those made of stag's horn.

The valley of the Somme, which has furnished such convincing proof of the co-existence of man with the great mammals of extinct species, is a no less precious repository for instruments of stag's horn belonging to the polished-stone epoch. The vast peat-bogs of this region are the localities where these relics have been chiefly found. Boucher de Perthes collected a considerable number of them in the neighbourhood of Abbeville.

These peat-bogs are, as is well known, former marshes which have been gradually filled up by the growth of peat-moss (sphagnum), which, mixed with fallen leaves, wood, &c., and being slowly rotted by the surrounding water, became converted after a certain time into that kind of combustible matter which is called peat. The bogs in the valley of the Somme in some places attain to the depth of 34 feet. In the lower beds of this peat are found the weapons, the tools, and the ornaments of the polished-stone epoch.

Among these ancient relics we must mention one very interesting cla.s.s; it is that formed by the a.s.sociation of two distinct component parts, such as stone and stag's horn, or stone and bone.

The hatchets of this type are particularly remarkable; they consist of a piece of polished flint half buried in a kind of sheath of stag's horn, either polished or rough as the case may be (fig. 111).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 111.--Polished Flint Hatchet, with a Sheath of Stag's Horn fitted for a Handle.]

The middle of this sheath is generally perforated with a round or oval hole intended to receive a handle of oak, birch, or some other kind of wood adapted for such a use.

Fig. 112, taken from the ill.u.s.tration in Boucher de Perthes' work ('Antiquites Celtiques et Antediluviennes'), represents this hatchet fitted into a handle made of oak.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 112.--Flint Hatchet fitted into a Stag's-horn Sheath, having an Oak Handle, from Boucher de Perthes' ill.u.s.tration.]

It is difficult to understand how it was that a hatchet of this kind did not fall out of its sheath in consequence of any moderately violent blow; for it seems as if there was nothing to hold it in its place. This observation especially applies to hatchets, the whole length of which--even the portion covered by the sheath--was polished; for the latter would certainly slide out of their casing with ease. The fact is, that complete specimens are seldom found, and, generally speaking, the flints are separated from their sheaths.

With regard to the handles, the nature of the material they were made from was unfavourable to their preservation through a long course of centuries; it is, therefore, only exceptionally that we meet with them, and even then they are always defaced.

Fig. 113 is given by Boucher de Perthes, in his 'Antiquites Celtiques,'

as the representation of an oaken handle found by him.

A number of these sheaths have been found, which were provided at the end opposite to the stone hatchet with strong and pointed teeth. These are boar's tusks, firmly buried in the stag's horn. These instruments therefore fulfilled a double purpose; they cut or crushed with one end and pierced with the other.

Sheaths are also found which are not only provided with the boar's tusks, but are hollowed out at each end so as to hold two flint hatchets at once. This is represented in fig. 114 from one of Boucher de Perthes'

ill.u.s.trations.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 113.--Hatchet-handle made of Oak.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 114.--Stag's-horn Sheath, open at each end so as to receive two Hatchets.]

The hatchet fitted into a sheath of stag's horn which we here delineate (fig. 115), was picked up in the environs of Aerschot, and is an object well worthy of note; it is now in the Museum of Antiquities at Brussels.

Its workmanship is perfect, and superior to that of similar instruments found in the peat-bogs of the valley of the Somme.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 115.--Polished Flint Hatchet from Belgium, fitted into a Stag's-horn Sheath.]

Stag's horn was often used alone as a material for the manufacture of tools which were not intended to endure any very hard work; among these were instruments of husbandry and gardening.

We here give representations (figs. 116, 117, 118) from Boucher de Perthes' ill.u.s.trations, of certain implements made of stag's horn which appear to have had this purpose in view. It is remarked that they are not all perforated for holding a handle; in some cases, a portion of the stag's antler formed the handle.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 116.--Gardening Tool made of Stag's Horn (after Boucher de Perthes).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 117.--Gardening Tool made of Stag's Horn (after Boucher de Perthes).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 118.--Gardening Tool made of Stag's Horn (after Boucher de Perthes).]

In the course of his explorations in the peat-bogs of Abbeville, M.

Boucher de Perthes found numerous flakes of flint of irregular shapes, the use of which he was unable to explain. But there have also been discovered in the same deposits some long bones belonging to mammals--tibia, femur, radius, ulna--all cut in a uniform way, either in the middle or at the ends; he was led to imagine that these bones might have been the handles intended to hold the flints. In order to a.s.sure himself that this idea was well founded, he took one of the bones and a stone which came out of the peat, and, having put them together, he found he had made a kind of chisel, well-adapted for cutting, scooping-out, scratching and polishing horn or wood. He tried this experiment again several times, and always with full success. If the stone did not fit firmly into the bone, one or two wooden wedges were sufficient to steady it.