In Southern Africa,[1] near Capetown and Grahamstown, flakes abound on the surface of the ground, sometimes of chert or flint, but often of basaltic rock. I have one from Grahamstown 8 inches in length.
Fig. 195.—Admiralty Islands.
Their occurrence in India has already been noticed. The flakes from Jubbulpore[2] are for the most part of small size, but some of those removed from the cores found in the river Indus must have been at least 5 or 6 inches long.
In America, flint, or rather horn-stone flakes, are not uncommon, though not so often noticed as the more finished forms. Some found in the mounds of Ohio are of considerable length, one engraved by Squier and Davis[3] being 512 inches long. Some of the Mexican flakes of obsidian are fully 6 inches in length.
In ancient times the Ichthyophagi are described by Diodorus[4] as using antelopes' horns and stones broken to a sharp edge in their fishing, "for necessity teaches everything." Flakes are still in some cases used without any secondary chipping or working into form.
We find, for instance, flakes of flint or obsidian, and even of glass, almost in the condition in which, they were struck from the parent block, employed as lance and javelin-heads, among several savage people, such as the natives of Australia,[5] and of the Admiralty Islands.[6] One of those said to be in use among the latter people is shown, half-size, in Fig. 195,[7] and exhibits the method of attachment to the shaft. The butt-end of the flake is let into a socket in a short tapering piece of wood, into the other extremity of which the end of the long
- ↑ Trans. Cong. Preh. Arch., 1868, p. 69. Geol. Mag., vol. v. p. 532. Journ. Anth. Inst., vol. xi. p. 124. Camb. Ant. Comm., vol. v. p. 67.
- ↑ Proc. Soc. Ant., 2nd S., vol. iii. p. 38. Journ. of Ant. Soc. of Cent. Prov., vol. i. p. 21. Journ. Ethn. Soc., N. S., vol. i. p. 175.
- ↑ "Anct. Mon. of Mississ. Vall.," p. 215.
- ↑ Lib. iii. c. 15.
- ↑ Wood, "Nat. Hist. of Man," vol. ii. p. 38.
- ↑ Journ. Anth. Inst., vol. vi. p. 409, pl. xx.
- ↑ For the use of this block I am indebted to the executors of the late Mr. Henry Christy. See also Lubbock, "Preh. Times," 4th Ed., p. 93.
