Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/152

The Stone Age in Greece. alone ; with it also the last touches were given to bone and horn implements, to knives and axes previously dipped in moist sand. That sand was employed in the process has been placed beyond the shadow of a doubt by closer inspection of these axes ; under the microscope have been discovered fine striae left there by the grains of sand which served to polish them. It is regrettable that the same test has not been applied to the like instruments from Greece. No information has yet reached us from Asia Minor or Hellas, but no doubt some day or other, when they take the trouble to look for them, will be found those fixed polishers contrived in huge stone masses, to which the workman repaired to give the finishing touches to the weapon in hand. He began by putting it into an oblong basin, with a very smooth bottom, or a wide groove hollowed out in the corner of a boulder, with just enough water to cover it ; then with a rapid and continuous movement he worked it up and down until friction had removed every roughness and salience.^ Stone industry, more than all its fellows, as soon as it emerges from the first gropings and impulses after a certain elegance, requires polishing practices ; in this way alone can it make up for inadequacy of tools, which yield very imperfectly cut, uneven, and seamy surfaces. A certain number of nuclei, as they are called, show us blocks out of which were obtained ' MoRTiLLET, te prihistorique. De Mortillet states having made out one hundred and twenty-seven of these stationary polishers, distributed over thirty-seven French departments.