The Evolution of Culture, and Other Essays

by Augustus Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers

Of the drift specimens which I have selected to illustrate the diagrams, five are from the gravel beds of St. Acheul, in order that we might have an opportunity of observing the variation in implements derived from the same locality, and probably belonging to the same or nearly the same period—chips in fact from the same workshop.

It has been usual to classify these drift implements in two divisions; the spear-head form, and the oval form. Of the first or spear-head form, figures 2 to 4 are typical examples; of the oval form, figure 8 is the best illustration. I venture, however, to think that a distinction more clearly embodying a principle of progress may be made by dividing them differently, and by placing in the first class those which are either left rough or rounded at one end and pointed at the other, of which figures 1 to 7 are examples; and in the second class, such as are chipped to an edge all round, of which figures 8 to 11 are types. My reason for preferring this classification to one dependent on outline is this. The first class having the natural outside coating of the flint or a roughly rounded surface on one side, appears to be in every way adapted to be held in the hand; whereas the second class, of which a beautiful specimen in the Christy Collection from St. Acheul is represented in a front and side view in figure 10, could not conveniently be used in the hand as a tool or weapon, without injury to the hand from the sharp edge with which its periphery is surrounded on all sides. If, therefore, we see reason for supposing that one class of implements was employed in handles, whilst the other may have been used in the hand, I think this constitutes a more important distinction, and one more obviously implying progress, than a classification which merely involves a modification of outline, which may have resulted from no more significant cause than a difference in the form of the flint nodule out of which the implement was made.[138]

Another important distinction between these drift implements as thus arranged, arises from the different purposes to which they may have been put by the fabricators. The first class, figures 1 to 7—it will be seen by the side view of them—could have been used only as spears, picks, or daggers, the pointed or small end being employed for that purpose, whereas the latter class, figures 8 to 11, are equally available for use as axes with the sharp and broad end. It is quite possible therefore, that we may see here, in these vestiges of the first tools of mankind (specimens of all varieties of which are found in the same beds at St. Acheul), the point of divergence between the two distinct classes, which must certainly be regarded as the two most constant and universal weapons of mankind in all ages and countries of the world, viz. the spear and the axe; the small end developed into the spear and into all that class of tools for which a point is required; and from the broad end we obtained the axe and all those tools which either as chisels, choppers, gouges, or battle-axes, have continued in use with an endless continuity of development and modification, and a world-wide history up to the present time. I am aware that in the St. Acheul implements, as well as in those of similar form from the laterite beds of Madras, we find occasionally specimens in which the small end is made broader, as if indicating the gradual development of an edge on that side, but upon the whole I think the balance of evidence is in favour of the broad end having originated the axe form.

Nothing, it will be seen, can be more primitive than these tools, or more gradual than their development. They are perfectly consistent with the idea that the fabricators of them were in a condition closely verging upon that of the brutes. Apes are known to use stones in cracking the shells of nuts. The advantage to be derived from a pointed form, when it accidentally fell into the hand, would suggest itself almost instinctively to any being capable of profiting by experience and retaining it in the memory. Accidental fractures, producing a sharp edge, would lead to fractures of design, and thus we may easily suppose that such implements as are represented in the first few figures of our diagram must necessarily have resulted from the very earliest constructive efforts of primaeval man.

From the very first, a peculiar mode of fabrication appears to have been adopted, which consisted of chipping off flakes from alternate sides of the flint, and the facets thus left upon the flint produce the wavelike edge which you will see in the side views of all the implements here represented. This method continued to be employed throughout the entire stone age, in all parts of the universe, and is characteristic not merely of the drift, but of the cave, pfahlbauten, and surface periods.

The numerous intermediate gradations of form, whether between the oval and the spear-head form, or between the thick and the sharpened form, have been noticed by Sir Charles Lyell (l. c., p. 164). By selecting specimens, and arranging them in order from left to right, I have endeavoured to trace the transition from the drift type to the almond-shaped celt type, which latter is common to the stone age of mankind, whether ancient or modern, in all parts of the world.

Had the discovery of drift implements been confined to one locality or to one district, it is probable it would have attracted but little notice. As early as the first year of the present century the attention of the Society of Antiquaries had been drawn by Mr. Frere to the existence of these implements, in conjunction with the remains of the elephant and other extinct animals at Hoxne in Suffolk. An illustration of the specimens from this locality is given in figure 4. Mr. Frere described them as ‘evidently weapons of war, fabricated and used by a people who had not the use of metals’. But little or no attention was paid to the subject until the discovery by M. Boucher de Perthes of precisely similar implements associated with the same class of remains, in the drift gravel of St. Acheul, near Amiens, in 1858.[139] Since then many other discoveries have been made, and still continue to be made, by Mr. Prestwich, Mr. Evans, Mr. Flower, Mr. Bruce Foote, and others, not only in this country but also in Asia and Africa, showing, in so far as the discoveries have hitherto gone, that this drift type, like the almond celt type, is common to the earliest ages in all parts of the world, and that everywhere the drift type preceded the almond-shaped celt type, and is found in beds of earlier formation.

Figure 5 is a drift-shaped implement from the laterite beds of Madras, of exactly the same form as those found in England. Figure 6 is an implement of the same class from the Cape of Good Hope, found fourteen feet from the surface. In America, implements of the drift type have not yet been discovered, but stone spear-heads have been found in Missouri in connexion with the elephant and other extinct animals. Figure 11 is from a mound of sun-dried bricks at Abou Sharein, in Southern Babylonia, obtained by Mr. J. E. Taylor, British Consul at Basrah; it is a chipped flint; in form it is of the drift type, and its outline is precisely that of some of the Carib celts found in the West India Islands; it also closely resembles in form others from the Pacific[140]; its edge was evidently at the broad end. Another of the same type was found at Mugeyer in Babylonia, and a third closely resembling the two former was found in a cave in Bethlehem.

The celt type has not as yet been found in the French caves of the reindeer period, but it is common in the ‘pile dwellings’ of the Swiss lakes. Some of the French cave specimens, however, closely approach the drift form, and in place of the celt, we have a peculiar kind of tool trimmed to a cutting edge on one side and having the other round for holding in the hand. As, however, these do not fall into the direct line of development, but may be regarded as a branch variety, I have not figured them in my diagram, but pass at once, though almost imperceptibly as regards form, from the drift to the surface type.