Primaeval Man in the Valley of the Lea. 137
quite plain, with the cone at the base; the cone shows the
point of impact of the quartzite pebble used in the hand as a
hammer. The plain side of a flake from Stoke Newington
Common is illustrated one half actual size at fig. 23 ; the
other side of such a flake may present either the natural
crust of the flint, or exhibit a surface with several artificial
facets, or it may be trimmed and bevelled all over; the
conchoidal swelling or curve projects towards the spectator
at a ; four distinct cones are seen at b b b b, and at least six
points of impact are indicated by the points of the six arrows.
These six or more cones prove that the flake was not easily
set free with the hammer
from the parent block of
flint, and that it took six or
more consecutive blows for
its discharge. Now people
who think they disbelieve in
flakes say a round tough
stone might fall from the top
of a high cliff on to a brittle
block of flint on the beach
below, and set a flake free
with a bulb of percussion ; or
that a glacier might force a
round tough stone against a

brittle flint with a similar

Fig. 23.—Plain side of an artificial
flake, one half actual size.
effect. Though improbable,
I acknowledge that such phenomena might happen and
produce one cone; but who in his senses can imagine the
round tough stone going up again to the top of the cliff and
falling down again five or six more times on to the same
place on the same flint, or a glacier altering its nature
and receding five or six times to produce five or six
cones closely adjoining each other ? Double, triple, and
quadruple cones are extremely common, and they distinctly
prove that a human hand, directed by a human brain,
delivered the successive blows.
Palaeolithic implements were probably never mounted in