Fig. 89. The chef-d'œuvre of the Acheulean industry is the Levallois flake, which may have evolved from the large flakes of Chellean times. After Worthington Smith.
No bone implements whatever have been found even with these late Acheulean flints, but it is important to observe that the majority of these stations are open and exposed to the weather and that bone implements would not be preserved here as they would in the sheltered grottos and caverns to which the flint workers repaired in the Mousterian and succeeding times.
As regards the finish of these flint implements, it is important to note that it is fine only by comparison with the crude work of the early Acheulean or the still coarser types of Chellean times and that the very finest work of Acheulean times appears thick and clumsy when contrasted with the finer work of the Upper Palæolithic.
The chef-d'œuvre of the late Acheulean industry is the Levallois flake, first found at Levallois-Perret, near Paris, which de Mortillet believed to be fashioned out of a divided coup de poing with a flat under-side, but which may have been evolved from the very large primitive flakes of Pre-Chellean date. These flakes date back earlier than the Chellean coup de poing but continued in use after its invention and may have been greatly perfected into the Levallois type. This type of 'couteau' is a large, wide, thin flake of fairly symmetrical shape, with a flat back formed by the original smooth surface of the flake. These implements are pointed, oval, or sharply rectangular in form and present the most characteristic tool of the closing stage of the Acheulean industry.
It is most interesting at this point to observe the two modes of evolution which seem to pervade all nature: first, the gradual perfection and modification in size and proportion of a certain older form; second, the sudden change or mutation into a new form, which in turn enters the stage of gradual improvement.
The late Acheulean is seen to present the climax of a gradual and unbroken development from the early Chellean industries and ideas; and to our mind this is strongly suggestive of a corresponding evolution of manual skill and mental development in the workmen themselves, who may have been partly of Pre-Neanderthaloid race.
The next industrial stage, namely, the Mousterian, which certainly presents the closing workmanship of the Neanderthal race, shows a marked retrogression of technique in contrast to the steady progression which we have observed up to this time. We have, in fact, witnessed a number of successive stages of progression, which are to be followed in the Mousterian by a stage of retrogression. Such a retrogression in industrial development may for certain known or unknown reasons occur in the same race. It is a noteworthy parallel that in the Upper Palæolithic, where the Solutrean culture represents the climax and perfection of flint working, the succeeding Magdalenian shows marked retrogression in the technique of flint retouch.
The Krapina Neanderthaloids
In northern Croatia, near the small town of Krapina, in the valley of the Krapinica River, is the now famous cavern of Krapina, where in 1899 was made the fourth discovery of the remains of men of the Neanderthaloid race in western Europe, twelve years after the discovery of the men of Spy, in Belgium, and forty-three years after the discovery of the man of Neanderthal. Even now opinion is divided as to the age of the human remains found in this cavern. The discoverer, Professor Gorjanovič-Kramberger of Agram considered that the stone implements and chips were of Mousterian age, and Breuil still refers them to the early, or so-called warm, Mousterian period; this opinion is shared by Déchelette. Schmidt, however, regards Krapina as a true Acheulean station, lacking in some of the typical implements, and of the same age as the 'loess' station of Ehringsdorf.