Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/379

] flanges (Fig. 119), and passed into the palstave (Figs. 117, 118).

This again proved inconvenient, and a third form was invented, in which the handle was let into a socket in the head of the axe, as in Figs. 120, 121. The second and the third of these have never been found in association with the first in this country. It is strange that the bronze-smiths should not have hit upon the mode by which we insert handles in our axes, which seems so natural and obvious, and it is still more so when we reflect that the hammer- and battle-axes of stone, perforated for the reception of the straight handle, were used in the early Bronze age. These, however, were not copied from bronze