104 Primaeval Man in the Valley of the Lea.
old river-terraces, the weapons and other instruments of
stone are disinterred with the excavated material. These
implements of flint are veritable "sermons in stones"; they
picture facts to us that it is impossible to question, and they
give us outlines, sometimes very plain and sometimes very
dim, of the men who made and used them.
After these preliminary remarks, I will proceed to say
where the Palaeolithic tools are to be found in the Lea Valley.
I will then describe the tools themselves, their positions in
the gravels, and some of the objects commonly found in
association with them; and lastly, I will glance at the
probable or possible cultural status of the men who made the
instruments.
The localities for Palaeolithic implements in the Lea Valley
are very numerous. If we restrict ourselves to the district
running north of the present point of confluence of the Lea
with the Thames to Cheshunt, we find on the west bank of
the Lea a vast deposit of river-gravel about fifteen miles long.
Now towards the top of the whole of this long bank of gravel
there was in remote times a large cohort of Palaeolithic men;
for on every part of this terrace (in the higher positions) from
the Thames to beyond Cheshunt the tools and flakes of the
ancient river-side men abound. There is far less gravel on
the Essex side of the Lea, but wherever the higher gravel is
there also are the buried tools of primaeval man and the fossil
bones of the animals that lived at the same time with him.
Before I proceed to distinctly point out the exact spots
where Palaeolithic implements are invariably found, it may
perhaps be well to indicate the positions where they are not
to be found, for if search is not made in the right variety of
gravel, or in the right places belonging to that gravel, one
may look for years and never light on a flake. In the
first place, then, it is almost useless to examine the gravels
on the hill-tops, or such gravels as are found at Buckhurst
Hill, for these are generally glacial in age and supposed to be
unproductive of implements. Personally, I may say that I
consider the subject of the unproductiveness of glacial gravels,
as regards implements, to be a question that requires further