What was the Use of these Pygmy Flints?
Various conjectures have been made as to the use of these small flint implements. They must have been made for human daily use and need.
Arrow Points are easily accounted for as used in hunting—being, it is supposed, fastened to wood shafts; which is still the practice of Australian savages.
Fishing Hooks is another very natural suggestion for some of the forms; when fixed with sinew or gut, the triangular form makes a specially suitable hook to catch in the throat of fish.
Knives is undoubtedly another use to which some specimens are adapted; the clear cut edge would, even after the lapse of thousands of years, cut flesh of animals at the present time.
Boring Tools, for making holes to sew skins together for clothing purposes, is also a natural theory for other specimens of these Pygmy Flints.
Chisels for scraping and shaping wood handles or hafts of their tools is also another suggestion, which is highly probable from the shape of the flints with a square cutting edge.
Skin Scrapers is still another use for which some specimens of the implements may have been made by these people who lived by the chase; while it is also possible that other shapes were mounted in wood frames and used as saws, sickles, and harpoons, as shown in British Museum Handbook, Fig. 118.
Some of them may have been used for tattooing, as has been suggested, but certainly not a great proportion of the many thousands that have been found.
By what Class of People were these Implements made?
To begin with, these small implements were made by people with keen vision, the minute character of their work being more easily seen and appreciated under a magnifying glass than with the naked eye of an ordinary observer.
They were also clever designers, as the persistent shapes of these implements show. It is not to an ordinary person an easy matter to chip out a piece of flint in the shape of these samples; the same figures or shapes are repeated in hundreds of instances.
Again, they were careful workers, as is seen by the way in which these flint implements are made. To-day men would have to exercise almost the care of a jeweller if they wished to make implements equal in shape and accuracy to those found on the Scunthorpe Floor, made by these Pygmy workers.
They knew how to make a fire, as many fragments of charcoal have been found on the floors of their dwelling places.
As regards their clothing, I am inclined to the idea that they clothed themselves but slightly, and what clothing they had was made of the skins of animals taken in the chase.