_Chisels_ for scraping and shaping wood handles or hafts of their tools
is also another suggestion, which is highly probable from the shape of
the flints with a square cutting edge.
_Skin Scrapers_ is still another use for which some specimens of the
implements may have been made by these people who lived by the chase;
while it is also possible that other shapes were mounted in wood frames
and used as saws, sickles, and harpoons, as shown in _British Museum
Handbook_, Fig. 118.
Some of them may have been used for tattooing, as has been suggested, but
certainly not a great proportion of the many thousands that have been
found.
BY WHAT CLASS OF PEOPLE WERE THESE IMPLEMENTS MADE?
To begin with, these small implements were made by people with _keen
vision_, the minute character of their work being more easily seen and
appreciated under a magnifying glass than with the naked eye of an
ordinary observer.
They were also _clever designers_, as the persistent shapes of these
implements show. It is not to an ordinary person an easy matter to chip
out a piece of flint in the shape of these samples; the same figures or
shapes are repeated in hundreds of instances.
Again, they were _careful workers_, as is seen by the way in which these
flint implements are made. To-day men would have to exercise almost the
care of a jeweller if they wished to make implements equal in shape and
accuracy to those found on the Scunthorpe Floor, made by these Pygmy
workers.
They knew how to _make_ a _fire_, as many fragments of charcoal have been
found on the floors of their dwelling places.
As regards _their clothing_, I am inclined to the idea that they clothed
themselves but slightly, and what clothing they had was made of the skins
of animals taken in the chase.
PYGMY SITES, STATIONS, OR DWELLING PLACES
One very interesting feature regarding Pygmy stations, sites, or dwelling
places where these Flints are found is their close association with a
_Peat Floor_. Monsieur de Pierpoint says: “He collected some thousands
of Pygmy Flints on the high plateaux above the Meuse. Formerly a thick
forest covered these mountains, and in that district the small flints
are mostly found near springs and away from the east winds.” Both at
Scunthorpe and on the hills of the Pennine Range, it is on or in the Peat
that these diminutive Flints are discovered. Dr. Colley March found them
in a bed of Peat 6 feet deep, in certain cases 10 feet deep, and at an
altitude of 1350 feet above sea-level. Dr. Gatty found them at Scunthorpe
on the top of the Peat and below the wind-blown sand 200 feet above
sea-level.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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