Fig. 25.—Whale’s Vertebra Cup.
The ancient workman had his knife, saw, adze, chisel, drill, and scraper,—or plane, as we may term it,—all made of flint. The worn and triturated edges of many of those flint-tools show abundant evidence of their use in fashioning some hard substance. He had also his file, made of grit-stone; of which various examples have been found in the caves. They are generally styled whetstones; but their purpose was probably the very same as that of a modern file. Some are of coarse-grained stone, and others of a finer grit. Without some such tools it would have been impossible to bring the more elaborate implements of bone and ivory to the state of finish which they present. Among such, the harpoons and fish-spears furnish a variety of types, diversified by the ingenuity of the workman, and the necessities of his craft. Examples of such primitive fishing implements of widely different eras are here grouped together. The three-pronged fish-spear, Fig. 26, illustrates the art of the Esquimaux fisherman: that living race of Arctic seas, which alike in arts and in condition of life, realises for us in so many ways the men of Europe’s post-glacial age. Alongside of it are a hook, or spear-head of deer’s-horn, Fig. 27, and a barbed fish-spear of the same material, Fig. 28, both the work of the ancient Lake-dwellers
Fig. 26-30.—Fish-spears and Harpoons.
of Neuchâtel. They present interesting analogies to the most familiar types of bone or ivory fish-spears of the French and English post-glacial era, of which Figs. 29, 30 are examples from the Dordogne Caves. Fig. 31, though worn and fractured, illustrates a form of the cave harpoon-blade, barbed only on one side. It is from Kent’s Cavern, where other, though less perfect, examples have been found. One of these, figured by Mr. Evans,[[44]] is specially noticeable for its curved form. Similar implements have repeatedly occurred in the cave-deposits, as in those of the Dordogne, and at Bruniquel, where also serrated flints or saws were found in unusual abundance. Fig. 36, from the cave of La Madelaine, is a good example of the unilateral fish-spear, much superior in workmanship to the similar implement of the modern Fuegian, shown in Fig. 33, and well adapted to the wants of a river-fisherman. But the form of the Kent’s Cavern type rather suggests that it was one of the blades of a large two-pronged, or three-pronged spear, similar to examples still in use among the Esquimaux:
Fig. 31.—Harpoon, Kent’s Cavern.
Fig. 32.—Bone Spear-head, Dordogne Caves.
