Primaeval Man in the Valley of the Lea. 103
The precursors of the river-side men have, as far as we
know, left no implements of stone for recognition; it is
probable that the very earliest men used naturally-broken
splinters and flakes of stone as tools and weapons. At last
the time arrived when some individual discovered that by
striking a hard, tough stone—like a quartzite pebble—on to
a hard and brittle one like a block of flint, that sharp knife-
like splinters, slices, or flakes would fly off from the flint, and
these splinters were the first artificially-made implements
used by the earliest men. The discovery of the art of
splintering or flaking was quite possibly unpremeditated, and
arose from seeing a block of flint accidentally shattered.
The ancient river-side men, to whom I refer as primaeval
men, are everywhere known as Palaeolithic men, because
they were the men who fabricated the most ancient stone
implements yet accepted as undoubted human work. The
rough unpolished stone implements of the Paleolithic men
are distinguished in various ways from the tools made by the
Neolithic men of later times. The former and more ancient
tools are commonly found embedded in undisturbed gravel,
sand, or loam, in company with fossil bones belonging to
animals many of which are now extinct. These implements
are never polished, and they are often abraded or water-worn,
owing to their being transported and washed about by the
ancient stream on whose banks they were made. Neolithic im-
plements, or implements belonging to a very much more recent
period, are generally found on or but little beneath the sur-
face ; they are frequently partly or wholly polished, and the
bones found with them are neither in a fossil nor semi-fossil
condition.
It is to the works of the Palaeolithic men—and chiefly those
men who formerly lived in the Lea Valley—that I now pro-
pose to direct attention. These old river-side men lived
on the ancient stony banks of the Lea; they picked up the
flints that were at their feet, and from these stones fabricated
their weapons and tools. Successive floods of river-water,
often slight, repeatedly covered up these flint tools with sand,
loam, or gravel; and now, when excavations are made in the