Fig. 117.—Gardening Tool made of Stag's Horn (after Boucher de Perthes).
Fig. 118.—Gardening Tool made of Stag's Horn (after Boucher de Perthes).
In the course of his explorations in the peat-bogs of Abbeville, M. Boucher de Perthes found numerous flakes of flint of irregular shapes, the use of which he was unable to explain. But there have also been discovered in the same deposits some long bones belonging to mammals—tibia, femur, radius, ulna—all cut in a uniform way, either in the middle or at the ends; he was led to imagine that these bones might have been the handles intended to hold the flints. In order to assure himself that this idea was well founded, he took one of the bones and a stone which came out of the peat, and, having put them together, he found he had made a kind of chisel, well-adapted for cutting, scooping-out, scratching and polishing horn or wood. He tried this experiment again several times, and always with full success. If the stone did not fit firmly into the bone, one or two wooden wedges were sufficient to steady it.
After this, Boucher de Perthes entertained no doubt whatever that these bones had been formerly employed as handles for flint implements. The same handle would serve for several stones, owing to the ease with which the artisan could take one flint out and replace it with another, by the aid of nothing but these wooden wedges. This is the reason why, in the peat-bogs, flints of this sort are always much more plentiful than the bone handles. We must also state that it seems as if they took little or no trouble in repairing the flints when they were blunted, knowing how easy it would be to replace them. They were thrown away, without further care; hence their profusion.
These handles are made of extremely hard bone, from which we may conclude that they were applied to operations requiring solid tools. Most of them held the flint at one end only; but some were open at both ends, and would serve as handles for two tools at once.
Figs. 119 and 120 represent some of these flint tools in bone handles—the plates are taken from those in Boucher de Perthes' work.