A collection of neolithic lance and arrow heads found in Ireland, now to be seen in the British Museum.
Drift Man after the Hunt
This shows man to have been then, as he is to-day, master even of the gigantic animal forms which so far surpass him in mechanical strength. It is the mind of man that shows itself superior to the most powerful brute force, even where we meet him for the first time. From the finds in the Somme valley it appears that Drift Man already possessed spear, dagger, and axe, besides the knife, as weapons. There the blades were of stone. The relatively small blades of the Taubach stone implements are, it is true, of the same character as the stone implements of Abbeville and Amiens, but they are chiefly, as we have said, merely knife-like articles, very suitable as blades for knives, scrapers, and daggers, and as arrow-heads, but not strong enough as hunting-weapons for such big game. The hunt must, therefore, have been more a matter of capture in pits and traps, as practised at the present day where similar large types of animals are hunted by tribes armed only with defective weapons. The kitchen refuse also proves that the settlement by the Ilm pond, near Taubach, was a permanent one, to which the hunters returned after their expeditions, bringing their game and trophies so far as they were easily transportable. But there is no trace of domestic animals. They could not have completely disappeared, any more than remains of clay vessels, which are still less destructible than bones, and in this respect may be compared to stone implements. There was no trace of potsherds either.
The Best “Find” of the Ice Age
The finds in the Somme valley and near Taubach are of incalculable importance as sure, indisputable proofs of Drift Man in Europe; but as regards the wealth of information to be derived from them respecting man’s psychical condition in that first period in which we can prove his existence, they are far and away surpassed by the find at the source of the Schussen, which Oscar Fraas, the celebrated geologist, has personally inventoried and described. Fraas has rightly given to his description of this find of Glacial Man—the most important and best examined hitherto—the title “Contributions to the History of Civilisation During the Glacial Period.”
The geognostic stratification of the relic-bed on one of the farthest advanced moraines of the Upper Swabian plateau proves that it belongs to the Glacial Period, and that this had already pushed its glacier-moraines to the farthest limit ever reached. In point of time the finds are, therefore, to be placed at the end of the Glacial Period, as it was passing into the Postglacial Period; everything still points to Far Northern conditions of life. The finds at the source of the Schussen are thus decidedly more recent, geologically, than those made at Taubach. They are a typical, or, better, the typical example of the so-called “Reindeer Period” of the end of the Drift.
IMPLEMENTS OF THE STONE AGE AND THEIR MAKING
The methods of holding a hammer-stone and of making a flint by pressure are illustrated at the top, those of using a chopping tool at the bottom, of this plate. The other objects are spear-heads, axes, and hammers of stone and flint, and javelin-heads of horn, the latter being smooth and barbed. The method of tying a flint chisel to a wooden handle is shown at the right (×). Most of these objects are to be seen in the British Museum.
LARGER IMAGE