The lost Atlantis, and other ethnographic studiesWilson, Daniel, Sir
History
The lost Atlantis, and other ethnographic studies
Wilson, Daniel, Sir
America -- Antiquities; Atlantis (Legendary place); Ethnology -- America; Indians of North America -- Antiquities
But now that adequate attention has been given to the stone implements
of the Drift-folk, or the men of the Mammoth and Reindeer ages, it
becomes apparent that they are by no means limited to such localities.
On the contrary, sites of native manufactories of flint implements, with
abundant remains of the fractured debris of the ancient tool-makers’
workshop, some of which are described on a later page, have been
discovered remote from any locality where the raw material could be
procured. Until the gun flint was superseded by the percussion cap, the
material for its manufacture was procured by sinking shafts through the
chalk until the beds of flint suited for the purpose were reached. In
this the modern flint-worker only repeated the practice of the primitive
tool-maker. A group of ancient flint pits at Cissbury, near Worthing,
has been brought into prominent notice by the systematic explorations of
Colonel A. Lane Fox. They occur in and around one of the aboriginal
hill-forts of Sussex, the name of which has been connected with Cissa,
the son of Ella, who is referred to by Camden as “Saxon king of those
parts.” But any occupation of the old hill-fort as a Saxon stronghold
belongs to very recent times when compared with that of the
flint-workers, whose pits have attracted the notice of modern explorers.
Colonel Lane Fox describes Cissbury Hill Fort as a great flint arsenal.
Here within its earthen ramparts the workmen who fashioned the arms of
the Stone age excavated for the beds of native flint in the underlying
chalk, and industriously worked it into every variety of weapon. “In one
place a collection of large flakes might be seen, where evidently the
first rough outline of a flint implement had been formed. In another
place a quantity of small flakes showed where a celt had been brought to
perfection by minute and careful chipping.”[21] In other excavations the
pounders, or stone hammers, were found, with a smooth rounded end by
which they were held in the hand, and the other bruised and fractured in
the manufacture of the flint implements that abound on the same
site.[22] Twenty-five pits were explored; and from these hundreds of
worked flints were recovered in every stage of workmanship: chips,
flakes, cores, balls, and finished knives; drills, scrapers, spear
heads, and axes or celts. In fact, Colonel Lane Fox sums up his general
statement of details with the remark that “Cissbury has produced
specimens of nearly every type known to have been found among flint
implements, from the Drift and Cave up to the Surface period.”[23] But
this “Woolwich” of the flint age occupied an altogether exceptional
position, with the raw material immediately underlying the military
enclosure, not improbably constructed on purpose to defend the primitive
arsenal and workshop, and so render its garrison independent of all
foreign supplies.
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