Aurignacian.—With the Mousterian the Lower Palæolithic has ended. In several activities of life, such as art and religion, the Upper Palæolithic represents a great advance over the Lower Palæolithic. Yet it seems that the mental energies of the Aurignacian people must have been pretty well absorbed by their new occupations and inventions, for their tools are largely the same retouched flakes as those the Mousterian had already employed. The Aurignacian carried on the stone technique of the Mousterian much as the Acheulean previously had carried on that of the Chellean.
Solutrean.—The Solutrean seems to have been a relatively brief period, and to have remained localized, for implements dating from it are the scarcest of any from the six divisions of the Old Stone Age. There was a distinct advance of interest in stone work during the Solutrean. The process of retouching, without being fundamentally altered, was evidently much better controlled than before. The best Solutrean workers were retouching both sides of their tools instead of one side only, as in the past, and working over not only the edge or point but the entire surface of their artifacts. One of the characteristic implements of their time was a laurel-leaf-shaped blade which has often been considered a spear point, but would also have been an effective knife and may often have been used as such. This has the surface of both sides, from tip to butt, finished in even retouching, and is equaled in excellence of workmanship only by the best of the spear points chipped by modern savages ([Fig. 18], c).
Of course this was not the only stone implement which the Solutrean people knew. They made points with a single shoulder at the butt, as if for mounting, and had crude forms which represented the types of earlier periods. This partial conservatism is in accord with the general observation already stated, that lower types tend to persist even after higher ones have been invented; and that because a period is determined by its best products it by no means follows that simpler ones are lacking.
Magdalenian.—The sixth period of the Old Stone Age, the Magdalenian, resembles the Mousterian in seeming at first glance to show a retrograde development. The retouching process was carried out with less skill, perhaps because the Magdalenians were devoting themselves with more interest to bone than to stone. Magdalenian retouched implements are less completely worked out and less beautifully regular than those of Solutrean times. One reason for this decline was that another technique was coming to prevail. This technique had begun to come into use earlier, but its typical development was Magdalenian. It was a process which, on account of its simplicity, once it was mastered, was tending to make the art of retouching unnecessary. This new method was the trick of detaching, from a suitable block of flint, long straight-edged flakes, by a single blow, somewhat on the principle by which a cake of ice can be split evenly by a well guided stroke of the pick. The typical Magdalenian implement of stone is a thin flake several inches long, triangular or polygonal in cross section; in other words, a long narrow prism ([Fig. 18], d).
To detach such a flake, flint of rather even grain is necessary, and the blow that does the work must be delivered on a precise spot, at a precise angle, and within rather narrow limits of force. This means that the hammer or striking tool cannot well come in direct contact with the flint. A short pointed piece, something like a nail or a carpenter’s punch, and probably made in the prehistoric days of horn or bone, is set on a suitable spot near the edge of the block of flint, and is then tapped smartly with the hammer stone. A single stroke slices off the desired flake. The sharp edges left on the block where the flake has flown off can be used to start adjacent flakes, and thus all the way round the block, the workman progressing farther and farther in, until nearly the whole of his core has been split off into strips.
Fig. 19. Flakes struck from a core and reassembled. Modern workmanship in Magdalenian technique.
This Magdalenian process, which was in use ten, fifteen, and perhaps twenty thousand years ago, survived, or was reinvented, in modern times. It is only a few years ago that flints were being struck off by English workmen for use on flintlock muskets exported to Africa. The modern Englishman worked with a steel hammer instead of a bone rod and cobblestone, but his technique was the same. [Figure 19] shows the complete lot of flakes into which a block has been split, and which were subsequently laid together so as to reform the stone in its original shape. Similar flakes made of obsidian, a volcanic glass similar to flint in its properties, are still being produced in the Indian districts of interior Mexico for use as razors ([Fig. 18], e).
The Magdalenian method of flint working gives the smoothest and sharpest edge. It is not adapted for making heavy instruments, but it yields an admirable knife. The process is also expeditious.