Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 09.djvu/135

LEFT STONE AGE, or AGE OF STONE 101 STONE FLY 3ociated with the existing fauna. The palaeolithic stone implements are distin- guished as a class from the neolithic by their greater rudeness of form, and by the facts that they are exclusively of flint and have been manufactured by chipping only. The neolithic stone im- plements on the other hand are of finer forms, often highly polished, and made of many varieties of stone besides flint. The palaeolithic implements of flint are mostly so rude that it is impossible to apply to them names indicative of spe- cific use. Those from the river gravels are chiefly flakes, trimmed and un- trimmed, for cutting and scraping; pointed implements, some almond-shaped or tongue-shaped; and more obtusely pointed implements, with rounded and often undressed butts. There is also a series of scraper-like implements, and another of oval sharp-rim.med imple- ments, which are more carefully finished than most of the other varieties. The flint implements from the caves present a greater variety of form. They are generally characterized by secondary working, and are therefore much more carefully finished, often in many re- spects approaching closely to neolithic types. From the caves also come a series of implements of bone and of carvings on bone which have excited much astonish- ment on account of the extraordinary contrast between their artistic character and the extreme rudeness of many of the implements of stone with which they are associated. These bone implements consist of well-made needles, borers, javelin or harpoon points barbed on one or both sides, and implements of reindeer horn of unknown use, which are usually carved in relief or ornamented with in- cised representations of animals, and oc- casionally of human figrures. The ani- mals, as for instance a group of rein- deer from the cave of La Madelaine, Dordogne, are drawn with wonderful faithfulness, freedom, and spirit. The neolithic stone implements con- sist of axes and axe hammers, knives, daggers, spear and arrow heads, saws, chisels, borers, and scrapers. The axes and axe hammers are made of many varieties of stone besides flint. Some of the finer polished axes are of jade and fibrolite. Most of the other implements were made only of flint and generally fin- ished by chipping, without being ground or polished. Some of the long Danish knives and dagrgers are marvels of dex- terous workmanship, on account of the thinness of the blade and the straight- ness and keenness of the edge. The burial customs of the stone age included both inhumation and cremation, the former being, however, the earlier method. No burials of the river drift period have yet been discovered. The cave dwellers of the stone age buried their dead in cavities of the rocks. From a comparison of the remains from such cave cemeteries in different localities it has been concluded that even at this early period Europe was already oc- cupied by more than one race of men. The populations of the neolithic time deposited their dead, with or without previous cremation, in or on the floors of the chambers of dolmens, or great-cham- bered cairns. The sepulchral pottery ac- companying these burials, in Britain at least, is generally of a hard-baked dark- colored paste, and the ornamentation en- tirely composed of straight lines placed at vai-ious angles to each other. The implements found with these interments are mostly of the commoner kind, such as flint knives, scrapers, or strikelights (used with a nodule of pyrites of iron), arrowheads, and more rarely axes and axe hammers of flint or polished stone. The neolithic inhabitants of North and Central Europe were not merely nomadic tribes subsisting on the products of the chase; they practiced agriculture, and possessed the common domestic animals we now possess. The presence in the refuse heaps of their sea coast settle- ments of the remains of deep-sea fishes shows that they must have possessed boats and fishing lines, as was also the case with the stone age inhabitants of the lake dwellings. The estimates that have been made of the antiquity of the stone age in Europe ave necessarily various, but it has been considered that the close of the neolithic period or the time when the use of stone began to be superseded by that of bronze in North Europe cannot have been much later than from 1000 to 1500 B. c. See Lake DwELUNGS; Stonehenge; Archjeology. STONE FLY, the Perla, a genus of in- sects tjrpical of the order Plecoptera. The hind wings are broader than the STONE FLY