Scraper from the Delaware Valley.
Figure 19.
Implement from the Delaware Valley.
The host ancient tools which have come down to us were clumsy and heavy, cut on both sides and pointed ([Fig. 20]). They may vary in material, in size, and in finish, but they can always be easily recognized.[2] Were they man’s only weapons? We hesitate to believe it, and the careful researches of M. d’Acy add to our incredulity.[3] He tells us that at Saint-Acheul, which was the very cradle of these strange discoveries, the almond shape is found mixed with the pointed amongst the Moustier flints, so that what is true in one place is not in another, and any general conclusion would certainly be premature.
Figure 20.
Worked flints from the Lafaye and Plantade shelters (Tarn-et-Garonne).
It would take us a long time to enumerate the countries where tools of the Chelléen[4] type have been found. They are met with in the valleys of the rivers of France, now imbedded in the flinty alluvium, now strewn upon the surface of the soil. Though rare in Germany, they are found in abundance in the southeast of England, and it is to this period that must be assigned the discoveries at Hoxne, and in the basins of the Thames, the Ouse, and the Avon. Similar discoveries have been frequent in Italy, Spain, Algeria, and Hindostan. Dr. Abbott speaks of the finding of such implements in the glacial alluvium of the Delaware (Figs. [18] and [19]), Miss Babitt in the alluvial deposits of the Mississippi, Mr. Haynes in New Hampshire, Mr. Holmes in Colombia, and other explorers in the basin of the Bridget and at Guanajuato in Mexico. Everywhere these implements are identical in shape and in mode of construction, and very often they are associated with the bones of animals of extinct species.
Sometimes these Chelléen tools (the French call them coups de poing) have retained at the base a projection to enable the user to grasp them better; these certainly never had handles, but it will not do to draw any general conclusions froth that fact; and an examination of the collection of M. d’Acy, the most complete we have of relics of the Chelléen period, proves on the contrary that certain tools could not have been used unless they had been fixed into handles.