Fig. 87. "The valley of the Vézère, a northern tributary of the Dordogne, cuts through a broad plateau of limestone in which the streams have hollowed out deep beds with vertical sides," favorable to the formation of caverns, grottos, and shelters. "Here the landscape of late Acheulean times bore the same general aspect as at present." Photograph by N. C. Nelson.

Among the most famous of the 'loess' stations of late Acheulean times is that of Achenheim on the upper Rhine, west of Strasburg. Here the 'older loess' contains a typical Acheulean culture.

With this prolonged epoch of cooler temperature the hippopotamus and the southern mammoth retreated to the warmer portions of southern Europe, and their remains are no longer found associated with the late Acheulean flints. The more hardy straight-tusked elephant and Merck's rhinoceros still continued in the north, apparently well adapted to sustain a very considerable fall in temperature.

Forms of Late Acheulean Implements

The coups de poing of the late Acheulean exhibit a great advance upon the Chellean, being fashioned into dagger or lance forms, with all the edges carefully chipped. The ovaloid implements of late Acheulean times are often worked into fine and sharp blades, which may have been used like butcher-knives for dismembering the carcasses of game and for cutting up the pelts, while the fine almond and disc shapes may have been used as scrapers to cut off the tissues of the inner surfaces of the hides, which were finally dressed by the grattoir, or flint planing tool. In brief, the coup de poing reaches its acme of development in late Acheulean times, both in the fineness of flaking and retouching and in its symmetry of form. The use of large flakes of flint and the retouching both of the borders and of the extremities of these flakes shows a constantly improving technique. It is in the thin, flat, triangular blades and in the lance-pointed forms that the coup de poing reaches its culmination; but we still observe the development of the oval or almond-shaped forms and of the flattened discs. The implements of this time reach their greatest perfection in the north of France, where flint is so abundant.

[Larger Image]

Fig. 88. Varied shapes of the Acheulean flints described as coups de poing, including some 'miniature' forms, after de Mortillet. The oval, the pointed, the almond, the triangular, the disc-shaped. The late Acheulean is distinguished by an advance in all the finer and smaller implements, tools, and weapons; yet the finest work of Acheulean times appears thick and clumsy when contrasted with the best Solutrean work of the Upper Palæolithic. One-quarter actual size.

The late Acheulean is further distinguished by an advance in all the finer and smaller implements and tools. The knives are now very fine and perfect, although they retain the broad, thick form of the original flint fragment and seldom attain the symmetrical shape which characterizes the blades of the Upper Palæolithic.[(41)] The 'points' are also of finer technique, with their edges converging from a broad base to a well-formed point. It is generally assumed that these were held in the bare hand, but it is quite as probable that they were attached to wooden shafts and used as dart or spear heads. By far the most numerous as well as the most varied of the smaller tools were the racloirs, or scrapers, which were developed, doubtless, by the increasing use of skins for clothing as a protection against the somewhat more rigorous climate of late Acheulean times. Probably the women of the tribe were employed in dressing hides by means of these scrapers, which were either flat and broad with crescent-shaped edges, flat and narrow, or double-edged with rounded ends. The development of other fine tools—borers, small discs, triangular and ovaloid shapes, miniature coups de poing, and many varied forms besides—is best witnessed in the station of La Micoque, close to the junction of the Vézère with the Dordogne. These miniature implements may well have been used in the final dressing of skins for clothing, in the chase of smaller kinds of game, or at feasts for splitting marrow-bones.