[Illustration: FIG. 88. Varied shapes of the Acheulean flints described as _coups de poing_, including some 'miniature' forms, after de Mortillet. The oval, the pointed, the almond, the triangular, the disc-shaped. The late Acheulean is distinguished by an advance in all the finer and smaller implements, tools, and weapons; yet the finest work of Acheulean times appears thick and clumsy when contrasted with the best Solutrean work of the Upper Palæolithic. One-quarter actual size.] The late Acheulean is further distinguished by an advance in all the finer and smaller implements and tools. The knives are now very fine and perfect, although they retain the broad, thick form of the original flint fragment and seldom attain the symmetrical shape which characterizes the blades of the Upper Palæolithic.(41) The 'points' are also of finer technique, with their edges converging from a broad base to a well-formed point. It is generally assumed that these were held in the bare hand, but it is quite as probable that they were attached to wooden shafts and used as dart or spear heads. By far the most numerous as well as the most varied of the smaller tools were the racloirs, or scrapers, which were developed, doubtless, by the increasing use of skins for clothing as a protection against the somewhat more rigorous climate of late Acheulean times. Probably the women of the tribe were employed in dressing hides by means of these scrapers, which were either flat and broad with crescent-shaped edges, flat and narrow, or double-edged with rounded ends. The development of other fine tools--borers, small discs, triangular and ovaloid shapes, miniature coups de poing, and many varied forms besides--is best witnessed in the station of La Micoque, close to the junction of the Vézère with the Dordogne. These miniature implements may well have been used in the final dressing of skins for clothing, in the chase of smaller kinds of game, or at feasts for splitting marrow-bones. [Illustration: FIG. 89. The _chef-d'œuvre_ of the Acheulean industry is the Levallois flake, which may have evolved from the large flakes of Chellean times. After Worthington Smith.] No bone implements whatever have been found even with these late Acheulean flints, but it is important to observe that the majority of these stations are open and exposed to the weather and that bone implements would not be preserved here as they would in the sheltered grottos and caverns to which the flint workers repaired in the Mousterian and succeeding times. As regards the finish of these flint implements, it is important to note that it is fine only by comparison with the crude work of the early Acheulean or the still coarser types of Chellean times and that the very finest work of Acheulean times appears thick and clumsy when contrasted with the finer work of the Upper Palæolithic.