The most useful tools that appear at this time were made from blades. 1. The “backed” blade. This is a knife made of a flint blade, with one edge purposely blunted, probably to save the user’s fingers from being cut. There are several shapes of backed blades (p. 73). [Illustration: TWO BURINS] 2. The _burin_ or “graver.” The burin was the original chisel. Its cutting edge is _transverse_, like a chisel’s. Some burins are made like a screw-driver, save that burins are sharp. Others have edges more like the blade of a chisel or a push plane, with only one bevel. Burins were probably used to make slots in wood and bone; that is, to make handles or shafts for other tools. They must also be the tools with which much of the engraving on bone (see p. 83) was done. There is a bewildering variety of different kinds of burins. [Illustration: TANGED POINT] 3. The “tanged” point. These stone points were used to tip arrows or light spears. They were made from blades, and they had a long tang at the bottom where they were fixed to the shaft. At the place where the tang met the main body of the stone point, there was a marked “shoulder,” the beginnings of a barb. Such points had either one or two shoulders. [Illustration: NOTCHED BLADE] 4. The “notched” or “strangulated” blade. Along with the points for arrows or light spears must go a tool to prepare the arrow or spear shaft. Today, such a tool would be called a “draw-knife” or a “spoke-shave,” and this is what the notched blades probably are. Our spoke-shaves have sharp straight cutting blades and really “shave.” Notched blades of flint probably scraped rather than cut. 5. The “awl,” “drill,” or “borer.” These blade tools are worked out to a spike-like point. They must have been used for making holes in wood, bone, shell, skin, or other things. [Illustration: DRILL OR AWL] 6. The “end-scraper on a blade” is a tool with one or both ends worked so as to give a good scraping edge. It could have been used to hollow out wood or bone, scrape hides, remove bark from trees, and a number of other things (p. 78). There is one very special type of flint tool, which is best known from western Europe in an industry called the Solutrean. These tools were usually made of blades, but the best examples are so carefully worked on both sides (bifacially) that it is impossible to see the original blade. This tool is 7. The “laurel leaf” point. Some of these tools were long and dagger-like, and must have been used as knives or daggers. Others were small, called “willow leaf,” and must have been mounted on spear or arrow shafts. Another typical Solutrean tool is the “shouldered” point. Both the “laurel leaf” and “shouldered” point types are illustrated (see above and p. 79). [Illustration: END-SCRAPER ON A BLADE]