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| Fig. I. A Flint Fist-Hatchet of the Early Stone Age |
The earliest finished tool produced by man, chipped from a great flake of flint some fifty thousand years ago. The original is about nine inches long, and the drawing reduces it to less than one third. It was grasped in the fist by the upper (narrower) part, and never had any handle. Handles of wood or horn do not appear until much later (compare Fig. 7). See Ancient Times, Fig. 2 |
edge was sufficiently sharp so that its owner could cut and chop with it. Its maker had not learned to attach a handle, but he grasped it firmly in his fist. The first of these fist-hatchets discovered in modern times was found in England two hundred years ago, but at that time no one understood its enormous age, or guessed who had made it. For the last fifty years such fist-hatchets have been found in large numbers deeply buried under the sand and soil that has gathered since their owners used them along the rivers of France, Belgium, and England. They are found side by side with the bones of tropical animals of vast size, showing that the men who made these stone tools lived in a much warmer climate than that of Europe to-day.
We may call the period of the fist-hatchets the Early Stone Age. The man of that day, some fifty thousand years ago, led the life of a, hunter, roaming about in the shadows of the lofty forests which fringed the streams and covered the wide plains of western Europe. The ponderous hippopotamus wallowed along the banks of the rivers. The fierce rhinoceros with a horn three feet long charged through the jungles of what is now France and England. The hunter fleeing before them caught dim glimpses of mountainous elephants plunging through the thick tropical growth.
