Compare the figures A and B given on page 9 with the illustration of the antlers of a red deer on page 7, and see how cleverly the hammer head and the pick have been fashioned. Equally clever has been the adaptation of a bone in the making of the very primitive dagger figured at D on the same page. But in this case it has been not the antler of a red deer that has been brought into use, but the thigh-bone of a man.
Flint Implement and Weapons.
A. Chisel from Aldro (1/1). B. Barbed arrow head from
Grimston (1/1) C. Javelin head from Duggleby Howe (1/1).
So far we have spoken of weapons and implements of bone and of flint. Others were then in use made of whinstone and greenstone, such as the axe heads figured overleaf. Notice the different arrangement of the cutting edge in these two implements, and notice also that in the first one the hole intended for the insertion of a wooden handle has, for some reason or other, not been finished. Perhaps the maker was killed before he had time to finish it, or perhaps he grew tired of his work and threw it away. At any rate this unfinished adze head was found loose on the surface of the ground, and not buried under a howe as was the other.
Unfinished Stone Adze Head
picked up on Acklam Wold (1/1).
Whinstone Axe Head from
a Barrow on Calais
Wold (2/3).
Weapons and implements of stone! May we not justly call their makers Men of the Stone Age? They lived before man knew how to dig metals from the earth, and how, having obtained them, to melt and mould them to his wish.