Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/116

106 always the work of man. To make one, the flint must he held firmly, and then a considerable force must he applied, either by pressure or by blows, repeated three or four times, but at least three, and given in certain slightly different directions, with a certain definite force; these conditions could scarcely occur by accident, so that, simple as it may seem to the untrained eye, a flint flake is to the antiquary as sure a trace of man as the footprint in the sand was to Robinson Crusoe.

To us, accustomed as we are to the use of metals, it seems difficult to believe that such things were ever made use of; we know, however, that many savages of the present day have no better tools. Yet, with axes such as these, and generally with the assistance of fire, they will cut down large trees, and hollow them out into canoes. The piles used in the Swiss Stone Age Lake habitations were evidently, from the marks of the cuts on them, prepared with the help of stone axes. The great similarity of arrow heads, even from the most distant localities, may be seen in the accompanying figures, which represent specimens from France, North America, and Tierra del Fuego, respectively.

Of monuments and tumuli belonging to this epoch, there is no lack; throughout the world, they are scattered—camps, dikes, fortifications, cromlechs, or stone circles. In the Orkneys, more than 2,000 of the smaller tumuli still remain. In Denmark, they are still more abundant. They are found all over Europe, from the shores of the Atlantic to the Ural Mountains; in Asia, they are scattered over the great steppes, from the borders of Russia to the Pacific Ocean, and from the plains of Siberia to those of Hindostan; the entire plain of Jelalabad, says Masson, "is literally covered with tumuli and mounds." In America, they are to be numbered by thousands and tens of thousands; nor are