122 Primaeval Man in the Valley of the Lea.
three distinct ages are not confined to the valley of the Lea
or the Thames, as they are met with at Canterbury, Bedford,
Southampton, and elsewhere.
In looking for the oldest human work it would be un-
reasonable to expect symmetrical implements. The very
earliest weapons and tools used by our most remote precursors
must have been natural or accidentally broken stones—
naturally pointed stones, and stones with a naturally suitable
cutting or chopping edge; the first attempts at implement-
making must have been at the time when the primaeval
savages "quartered" a stone by smashing it, and then selected
pointed and knife-like pieces of this stone for tools.
None of the following rules are without exceptions, for
amongst the implements, which are usually very large, a
very small specimen may now and then occur ; and amongst
those which are usually very small there may be at times a
large example. The lustre and deep ochreous tints may at
times vary a little. Notwithstanding exceptions, when all
the characters are taken together, the distinctness of the
three classes will hold good.
The oldest known tools, then, are found at the base of the
20 and 30 ft. excavations; they can, according to my esti-
mate, be recognised by the following characters:—they are
generally lingulate, or club-shaped, with a heavy butt,
often rudely ovate, never sharply acuminate, generally large
and very rude, frequently with a thick, ochreous crust, and
always greatly abraded, as if they had been tossed about for
ages in the sea. Some of these implements are so much
abraded that they have lost almost every trace of flaking.
These old implements acquired their ochreous crust before
they were buried in the gravel, as they occur amongst sub-
angular lustrous flints, and, though of flint, they also occur
in chert gravel, where only the implements and a few stray
stones exhibit the ochreous crust. I have seen no trimmed
flakes or scraping tools belonging to this older age. At
Canterbury they occur in thin seams of distinct ochreous
material, where all the contained flints have an ochreous
surface. All these older tools were made at a long distance