Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VII.djvu/204

196 fossil shells used for adornment. There are many articles in the deposits of the quaternary epoch whose intention or significance is not known. Some are believed to have been religious symbols and emblems of authority. The natural color of all the wrought flints that belong to the earliest epoch of man's existence is gray, from the brightest to the darkest tint; but argillaceous soils color them white, and ochreous gravels yellowish brown. The proof of their age is the patina, which is the established term for those which are white on one side and brown on the other, probably from having lain between two different beds. To guard against fraud and to detect modern imitations of ancient stone implements, it is well to notice whether the flints are coated with branching crystallizations, called dendrites, of a dark brown, produced by the combined action of the oxides of iron and manganese generally contained in fossiliferous beds.—The finds which are assigned to the second division of the stone age, the epoch of the reindeer or of migrated existing animals, consist of flints which bear marks of more skilful workmanship, and implements in bone, ivory, and reindeer horn, not found in caves where human bones were mixed up with those of animals. Little splinters of bone, one or two inches long, straight, slender, and pointed at both ends, have been found among the deposits of Bruniquel and the Dordogne valley, and are believed to have served as fish hooks during this epoch. Numerous instruments have been found which must have been used as needles, as they are exactly like those now employed by the Lapps for the same purpose. Prof. Owen thinks the men of this period were anthropophagists, because human skulls have been found mixed up with sculptured flints, remains of pottery, and children's bones on which there seem to be traces of human teeth. To this period are also assigned the polishers, formed of sandstone or some other material with a rough surface; they were used for polishing bone and horn. Other objects classified as belonging to this age are barbed dartheads or harpoons; small flint saws, fine-toothed and double-edged; bone bodkins or stilettoes, either with or without a handle; smoothers, probably intended to flatten down the seams in the skins used for garments; flint points with a cutting edge, probably used as drills; whistles made from the first joint of the foot of a reindeer; staves of horn, which were perhaps symbols of authority; earthen vases and urns, which at the bottom bear traces of the action of fire; and first attempts at art, as sketches of mammoths graven on slabs of ivory, hilts of daggers carved in the shape of a reindeer, and representations of bisons, stags, and unknown herbivorous animals. The most important places where finds of such articles have been made are the grottoes and caves near Finale on the road from Genoa to Nice; a cave on a mountain near Geneva; the bottom of an ancient glacier moraine not far from the lake of Constance; the caverns at Solutré, Bourdeilles, Laugerie-Basse and Laugerie-Haute, Abbeville, Les Eyzies, Chaffant, La Madeleine, Lavache, and Bruniquel, in France; the cave of Chaleux, the settlements on the banks of the Lesse, the cave near Turfooz, in Belgium; and the gravel beds of Colorado and Wyoming, the loess of the lower Mississippi valley, and the Osage and Bourbeuse valleys, in North America.—The third epoch of the stone age, with domesticated animals of existing species, which is also designated as the polished stone epoch, is believed to embrace the finds made in the kjoekken-moeddings (Dan. kjoekken, kitchen; moedding, heap of refuse), or kitchen middens, principally in Scandinavia, but also discovered in Cornwall and Devonshire, England, in Scotland, and near Hyères, at St. Valery, department of Pas-de-Calais, at La Salle, and at Cronquelets, in France. Darwin met with them in Tierra del Fuego; Dampier in Australia; Pereira da Costa on the coast of Portugal; Lyell on the coasts of Massachusetts and Georgia; and Strobel on the coast of Brazil. Numerous finds assigned to this epoch have also been made in the caves of Old Castile and the provinces of Seville and Badajoz in Spain, in the neighborhood of Cività Nuova in S. Italy, and in the island of Elba. Polished stone implements have also been found in Würtemberg, Hungary, Poland, and Russia. Leguay found in 1860 near Varenne-Saint-Hilaire, at a spot called La Pierre au Prêtre, a complete polishing stone, having on its surface three depressions of different sizes, two well defined grooves, and one merely sketched out. The polishing of stone instruments was effected by rubbing the object in one of these cavities, in which probably a little water was poured, mixed with zircon or corundum powder, or perhaps merely with oxide of iron, which is still used by jewellers for the same purpose. Finds of numerous hatchets and other polished instruments, near the fragments of several polishing stones, have given rise to the supposition that at this epoch there were regular workshops in which weapons and implements were manufactured. In the kitchen middens were found flat hatchets, cut squarely at the edge; drilled hatchets variously combined with a hammer; double-edged axes and axe hammers, pierced with a round hole in which the handle was fixed; beautiful spear heads in the shape of a laurel leaf, flat, and chipped all over with great art, which were evidently fixed to staves; poniards with handles sometimes covered with delicate carving; arrowheads of various shapes; chisels somewhat in the form of a quadrangular prism; small stone saws, in the shape of a crescent of which the inner edge, which was either straight or concave, was skilfully serrated; and various ornaments, as necklaces made of small pieces of amber, perforated and strung. The instruments of stag's horn found in the valley of the Somme are also considered as belonging to this epoch. Particularly interest-