M. Boucher de Perthes thought that some of the pointed forms might have been used as wedges for splitting wood or grubbing for esculent roots, or possibly for tilling the ground. Some of the sharp-rimmed implements he regarded as hatchets. He has pointed out various methods in which they might have been hafted and used.[1] Some of the smaller size, I have suggested, may have been missiles. On the whole, however, although I have pointed out the manner in which some of the implements appear to have been held, and have called attention to the marks of wear on their edges, I revert to my old opinion,[2] "that it is nearly useless to speculate on the purposes to which they were applied."
To use the words of Sir John Lubbock,[3] "Almost as well might we ask to what would they not be applied. Infinite as are our instruments, who would attempt even at present to say what was the use of a knife? But the primitive savage had no such choice of tools; we see before us, perhaps, the whole contents of his workshop; and with these weapons, rude as they seem to us, he may have cut down trees, scooped them out into canoes, grubbed up roots, killed animals and enemies, cut up his food, made holes in winter through the ice, prepared firewood, built huts, and in some cases at least, they may have served as sling-stones." To these possible uses I may add that of fashioning other instruments of wood and bone, such as may yet be eventually discovered with them in the same beds of drift, as has already been the case in caves, with regard to those of bone or stag's horn.
Considering the number of the stone implements which have been collected, it seems at first sight singular that no other relics of those who made them have as yet been discovered. For, nothing of moment in the shape of implements, utensils, or appliances, made of other materials than stone, have as yet been found, nor with but few exceptions, any portions of the human skeleton. It must, however, be remembered how imperishable in their nature are flint and the other silicious stones used for these ancient implements, as compared with the other materials which, among a savage people, come readily to hand, such as wood, bone, horn, or hide; and, moreover, that even the flint implements, in many cases testify to the rough usage they have undergone by water transport, before being finally laid in their
- ↑ "Ant. Celt. et Antéd.," vol. iii. p. 76, et seqq.; 455, et seqq.
- ↑ Arch., vol. xxxviii. p. 291.
- ↑ Nat. Hist. Rev., 1862, p. 250.
