130 UNEXPLORED FIELDS OF ESSEX ARCHAEOLOGY.
The majority of tools of the present day are |grasped by the
fingers, and preparation against thrust is not always necessary,
and it is not, as a rule, provided.
These "Palaeoliths," as they are technically called, are very
numerous, and genuine specimens, although they may be very
crudely worked, may be found in most of the Essex gravels.
The River-drift gravels of the Thames and Lea are well known,
and there are many gravels, not described as River-drift, which
are also implementiferous. In order to obtain a conception of
the vast antiquity that attaches to some of these implements, it
is necessary to step just outside the county. At Swanscombe,
near Greenhithe, they may be obtained from gravels lodged in
the clefts of the chalk some eighty to a hundred feet above the
present level of the Thames. These gravels were obviously laid
down before the present channel of the river existed. Similarly
in many parts of Essex gravels containing implements occur at
heights above the present river channels which leave the
impression that the gravels were distributed before the present
rivers had cut their channels. Worked-stones may be found on
the higher grounds at Braintree, Dunmow, Felstead, and Great
Waltham, and very probably almost all over the county. I can
now add as a result of studying Messrs. Hinton and Kennard's
paper1 that implements found in the High Terrace deposits
of the Thames in Essex would run those specimens found
at Swanscombe very closely in point of antiquity.
So far we have been treating of a subject that is not new to
the generality of our readers. But now in direct connection with
the close of this obscure period there are beds of Brick-earth, for
the most part unexplored, which contain the same kinds of relics.
These relics generally, so far as I have seen, are less abraded
and appear to be smaller and better finished, but the collections
at present obtained are few. As these get supplemented by
further examples we shall perhaps find that the gulf that
separates the Palaeolothic from the Neolithic ages is not quite so
unbridgeable as has been supposed.
In order to explain where some of these "New Palaeolithic"
implements are to be found we must take ourselves back to the
time when the rivers of Essex ran with greater powers of erosion
1. "Contributions to the Pleistocene Geology of the Thames Valley, 1. The Grays
Thurrock Area, Part II.'' Essex Naturalist, Vol. xv, pp. 56-88.