PALÆOLITHIC DEXTERITY
Archæology has undertaken novel duties as the handmaid of history.
With its aid we have acquired more definite ideas of the men of
Western Europe in its pleistocene or quaternary epoch than we possess
of the contemporaries of Greece and Rome in the centuries preceding
the Christian era. The huge cave-bear, the cave-lion, with their more
formidable congener, the sabre-toothed _Machairodus latidens_, preyed
on the mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, the reindeer, musk-sheep, and
other fauna of a semi-arctic climate; and the men of that same epoch,
while still ignorant of the very rudiments of metallurgy, fashioned
for themselves sufficiently effective weapons to contend successfully
with the fiercest of the carnivora, and secure for their own use the
spoils of the chase. Palæolithic man made his home in the deserted
rock-shelters and caves of the hyæna and cave-bear; and in spite of the
privations of a rigorous climate, found leisure not only to fashion
his ingenious tools, but to indulge a taste for art, alike in carving
and in etching on ivory and stone, to an extent altogether remarkable
when the whole attendant circumstances are duly estimated. Specimens
of those primitive works of art, including ingenious carvings in
bone and ivory, and lances, daggers of deers’ horn, maces and batons
carved in bone, and decorated in some cases with artistic skill, have
been recovered from the cave-drift, or more securely sealed up in the
cave-breccia. The evidences of skill are unmistakable. Within the last
thirty years repeated discoveries of such ancient cave-dwellings, and
the investigation of their contents, have familiarised us with the
workmanship of their primitive artificers. The evidence which these
ingenious products furnish in proof of the dexterity of the ancient
cave-men, in the more comprehensive sense of that term, is universally
recognised; but my attention was first directed to the possible clue
which they might furnish to the prevalent use of one or other hand in
that remote age, by what on further investigation proved to be an
error in the reproduction of the famous drawing of the mammoth on a
plate of its own ivory, found in La Madelaine Cave, in the Valley of
the Vézère. In M. Louis Figuier’s _L’Homme Primitif_, for example,
which might be assumed as a reliable authority in reference to the
illustrative examples of French palæolithic art, the La Madelaine Cave
sketch is incorrectly reproduced as a left-hand drawing; that is to
say, the mammoth is looking to the right. This is a nearly unerring
test of right or left-handedness. The skilled artist can, no doubt,
execute a right or left profile at his will. But an unpremeditated
profile-drawing, if done by a right-handed draftsman, will be
represented looking to the left; as, if it is the work of a left-handed
draftsman, it will certainly look to the right.
The drawings of those contemporaries of the mammoth and other extinct
fauna of Europe have naturally excited attention on various grounds.
They furnish no uncertain evidence of the intellectual status of the
men of that remote age who constituted the population of Southern
France, and of neighbouring regions, under climatic conditions
contrasting as strangely with those of the sunny land of the vine
and the olive, as did the contemporary fauna and flora with those of
Guyenne or Gascony at the present day. Any evidence therefore of their
mode of working derived from their carvings and drawings has a special
bearing on an inquiry into the antiquity and assumed universality of an
instinctive habit.
The examples of primitive art are of varying degrees of merit. Some of
them may be compared to the first efforts of an untutored youth; while
others, such as the La Madelaine mammoth and the grazing reindeer from
Thayngen, show the practised hand of a skilled draftsman. Among the
fanciful illustrations introduced by M. Louis Figuier in his _L’Homme
Primitif_ is a picture showing the arts of drawing and sculpture as
practised during the reindeer epoch. Three men of fine physique,
slightly clad in skins, stand or recline in easy attitudes, sketching
or carving as a modern artist might do in the lighter hours of his
practice. One stands and sketches a deer, with free hand, on a piece
of slate, which rests against a ledge of rock as his easel. Another,
seated at his ease, traces a miniature device with, it may be, a
pointed flint, on a slab of bone or ivory. The third is apparently
carving or modelling a deer or other quadruped. All are, as a matter
of course, represented with the stylus, graver, or modelling tool in
the right hand, the question of possible left-handedness not having
occurred to the modern draftsman.
All experience points to the conclusion that the primitive artificer
habitually used one hand, whether the right or the left. Even when the
naturally left-handed have acquired such facility in the use of the
right hand, by persevering compliance with the usage of the majority
in many customary practices of daily life, as to be practically
ambidextrous, each hand is still employed by instinctive preference
in certain definite acts; as with all, the knife is habitually used
in one hand and the fork in the other. The result never leads to an
indiscriminate employment of either hand. The necessity for promptness
of action in the constantly recurring operations of daily life is
sufficient to superinduce the habitual employment of one or the other
hand with no more conscious selection than in the choice of foot,
when not under command of a drill sergeant. Indeed, the experience
of many readers, whose training as volunteers has included that
important branch of education styled “the goose step,” must have
convinced them that few questions are more perplexing to the novice
than, “Which is the right foot, and which is the left?” In football
no player is in doubt as to the foot he shall use. In cricket there
is no uncertainty as to the choice of hand for the bat. In digging
the action is so certain, though unpremeditated, that in Ireland,
and probably elsewhere, “the spade-foot” is a term in general use.
It is not necessarily the right foot, but it is always the same. The
unpremeditated action of hand or foot is uniform, as the reader will
find by clasping his hands with the fingers interlaced, or inviting
another to do so. It is no matter of chance which thumb shall be
uppermost. But combined operations involving close unity of action are
rare in savage life; and man in the hunter stage is little affected in
his habits by social usage. Hence spontaneous left-handedness may be
looked for more frequently in such a stage, and even in peasant life,
than in cultured society; though the occasions for its manifestation
are more rare.
Attention has already been directed to the test of the diverse
direction in which a profile is most readily, and therefore most
naturally, drawn if executed by the right or the left hand. In so far
as the drawings or etchings of the palæolithic age are available for
the application of this test, the following data may be adduced:--
The mammoth drawing from La Madelaine Cave; the bison, imperfect,
showing only the hind-quarters; and the ibex, on reindeer-antler, from
Laugerie Basse; the group of reindeers from the Dordogne, two walking
and one lying on its back; the cave-bear of the Pyrenees, from the cave
of Massat, in the department of Ariége; and another sketch representing
a hunter stalking the Urus: may all be regarded as right-hand drawings.
But the horses from La Madelaine, engraved on reindeer-antler,
specially noticeable for their large heads; the horse, from Creswell
Crags; and, above all, the remarkably spirited drawing of the reindeer
grazing, from Thayngen in the Kesserloch--a sketch, marked by incident,
both in the action of the animal and its surroundings, suggestive of an
actual study from nature,--all appear to be left-hand drawings.
The number of examples thus far adduced is obviously too small to
admit of any general conclusions as to the relative use of the right
or left hand being based on their evidence; but so far as it goes,
while it presents one striking example of a left-handed drawing, it
confirms the idea of the predominance of right-handedness at that
remote stage in the history of European man. It confirms, moreover, the
correctness of the distinction already made between the preferential
use of either hand by the cultured and skilled workman, or the artist,
and its employment among rude, unskilled labourers engaged in such
toil as may be readily accomplished by either hand. That the use of
the left hand is transmitted from parent to child, and so, like other
peculiarities, is to some extent hereditary, is undoubted. This has,
therefore, to be kept in view in drawing any comprehensive deductions
from a few examples confined to two or three localities. It may be
that the skilled draftsman of the Vézère, or the gifted artist to whom
we owe the Kesserloch drawing, belonged to a family, or possibly a
tribe, among whom left-handedness prevailed to an unusual extent; and
so might be developed not only hereditarily but by imitation. But on
the other hand, even among those palæolithic draftsmen, there is a
distinct preference for the right hand in the majority of cases; and
this is just what was to be expected. The more the subject is studied
it becomes manifest that education, with the stimulus furnished by
the necessities arising from all combined action, has much to do with
a full development of right-handedness. The bias is unquestionably in
that direction; but with many it is not so active as to be beyond the
reach of education, such as the habit and usage of companions would
supply, to overcome it. But with a considerable number the preferential
use of the right hand is prompted by a strong, if not unconquerable
instinctive impulse. A smaller number are no less strongly impelled
to the use of the left hand. In the ruder conditions of society each
man is free to follow the natural bias; and in the absence or rare
occurrence of the need for combined action, either habit attracts
little attention. But so soon as co-operation begins to exercise its
restraining and constraining influences, a very slight bias, due
probably to individual organic structure, will suffice to determine
the preference for one hand over the other, and so to originate the
prevalent law of dexterity. The results shown by the ancient drawings
of Europe’s cave-men perfectly accord with this. In that remote dawn
every man did that which was right in his own eyes. Some handled their
tools and drew with the left hand; a larger number used the right hand;
but as yet no rule prevailed. In this, as in certain other respects,
the arts and habits of that period belong to a chapter in the infancy
of the race, when the law of dexterity, as well as other laws begot by
habit, convenience, or mere prescriptive conventionality, had not yet
found their place in that unwritten code to which a prompter obedience
is rendered than to the most absolute of royal or imperial decrees.
But we are not limited to the comparatively rare and exceptional
examples of primitive dexterity which the works of the palæolithic
carver and etcher supply for illustrations of the special habit now
under consideration. The graceful proportions and delicate manipulation
of many of the chipped implements of flint have, not unnaturally,
excited both admiration and wonder, in view of the very limited
resources of the worker in flint.
But the process of the ancient arrow-maker is no lost art. It has been
found in use among many barbarous races; and is still practised by
some of the American Indian tribes, to whom the art has doubtless been
transmitted through successive generations from remotest times. The
modes of manufacture vary somewhat among different tribes; but they
have been repeatedly witnessed and described by explorers who have
watched the native arrow-maker at work; and his operations no longer
present the difficulties which were long supposed to beset this “lost
art” of prehistoric times. Among the rarer primitive implements are
hammer-stones, oblong or rounded in shape, generally with cavities
worked in two faces, so as to admit of their being conveniently held
between the finger and thumb. Implements of this class have been
repeatedly recovered from the French caves. An interesting example
occurred among the objects embedded in the red cave-earth of Kents’s
Hole, Devonshire; and others of different periods, usually quartzite
pebbles or nodules of flint, have been found in many localities. Some
of them were probably used in breaking the larger bones to extract the
marrow, but the battered edges of others show their contact with harder
material. Similar hammer-stones occur in the Danish peat-mosses, in the
Swiss lake-dwellings, in sepulchral deposits, and are also included
among the implements of modern savage art. They vary also in size, and
were, no doubt, applied to diverse purposes.
The mode of fashioning the large, tongue-shaped implements and rude
stone hatchets, which are among the most characteristic drift
implements, it can scarcely be doubted, was by blows of a stone or
flint hammer; as was obviously the case with large unfinished flint
or horn-stone implements recovered by me from some of the numerous
pits of the Flint Ridge, a siliceous deposit of the Carboniferous Age
which extends through the State of Ohio, from Newark to New Lexington.
At various points along the ridge funnel-shaped pits occur, varying
from four or five to fifteen feet deep; and similar traces of ancient
mining may be seen in other localities, as at Leavenworth, about three
hundred miles below Cincinnati, where the gray flint or chert abounds,
of which large implements are chiefly made. The sloping sides of the
pits are in many cases covered with the fractured flints, some of them
partially shaped as if for manufacture. The work in the quarry was, no
doubt, the mere rough fashioning of the flint by the tool-makers, with
a view to facility of transport, in many cases, to distant localities.
But the finer manipulation, by means of which the carefully-finished
arrow-heads, knives, lances, hoes, drills, scrapers, etc., were
manufactured, was reserved for leisurely and patient skill. Longfellow,
in his Indian epic, represents the Dacotah arrow-maker busy plying
his craft. It was no doubt pursued by specially skilled workmen; for
considerable dexterity is needed in striking the flakes from the flint
core, and fashioning them into the nicely-finished edged tools and
weapons to be seen in many museums. The choice of material is by no
means limited to flint.
At the doorway of his wigwam
Sat the ancient Arrow-maker,
In the land of the Dacotahs,
Making arrow-heads of jasper,
Arrow-heads of chalcedony.
Beautifully-finished arrow-heads and other smaller implements,
fashioned of jasper, chalcedony, white quartz, and rock-crystal, are
among the prized relics of many collections. The diversity of fracture
in such materials must have taxed the skill of the expert workman,
familiar chiefly with the regular cleavage of the obsidian, chert,
or flint. But it is now known that the more delicate operations in
the finishing of the flint implements were done by means of pressure
with a horn or bone arrow-flaker; and not by a succession of blows
with a chisel or hammer. The process has been repeatedly described
by eye-witnesses. Dr. Evans quotes more than one account of methods
pursued among the Eskimo, the native Mexicans, and the Shasta Indians
of California. Another, and in some respects more minute account of
the process, as it is in use by the Wintoon Indians, is furnished by
Mr. B. B. Redding, in the _American Naturalist_, from his own personal
observation. The material, as among the Shasta Indians, was obsidian;
but the process is equally applicable to flint, the cleavage of which
is nearly similar.
The artificer was Consolulu, the aged chief of the Wintoon Indians. His
implements consisted of a deer-horn prong split lengthwise, four inches
long and half an inch thick, with the semicircular end at right angles;
two deer-horn prongs, one smaller than the other, with the ends ground
down nearly to the shape of a square sharp-pointed file; and a piece
of well-tanned buckskin, thick, soft, and pliable. Laying, as we are
told, a lump of obsidian, about a pound in weight, in the palm of the
left hand, he placed between the first and second fingers of the same
hand the semi-cylindrical deer-horn implement, so that the straight
side of one of the ends rested about a quarter of an inch from the edge
of the block of obsidian. With a small water-worn stone in his right
hand, he struck the other end of the prong, and a flake of obsidian
was severed, well adapted for the arrow-head. On the buckskin, in the
palm of his left hand, he laid the obsidian flake, which he held in
place by the first three fingers of that hand, and then took such a
position on the ground that the left elbow could rest on the left knee
and obtain a firm support. Holding in his right hand the larger of
the two pointed prongs, and resting his thumb on the side of his left
hand to serve as a fulcrum, he brought the point of the prong about
one-eighth of an inch within the edge of the flake; and then, exerting
a firm downward pressure, fragment after fragment was broken off until
the edge of the arrow was made straight. As all the chips came off the
lower edge, the cutting edge was not yet in the centre of the side. But
the Wintoon arrow-maker rubbed the side of the prong repeatedly over
the sharp edge, turned over the flake, and, resuming the chipping as
before, brought the cutting edge to the centre. In a similar manner,
the other side and the concave base of the arrow-head were finished.
The formation of indentations in the sides near the base for the
retention of the tendons to bind the arrow-head securely to the shaft,
apparently the most difficult process, was in reality the easiest. The
point of the arrow-head was held between the thumb and finger of the
left hand, while the base rested on the buckskin cushion in the palm.
The point of the smaller deer-horn prong, not exceeding one-sixteenth
of an inch square, was brought to bear on the part of the side where
the Indian arrow-maker considered the notch should be. A sawing motion
made the chips fly to right and left, and in less than a minute it
was cut to the necessary depth. The other side was then completed in
like manner. The entire process was accomplished, and the arrow-head
finished, in about forty minutes.
This account of the process of the Wintoon arrow-maker refers, it
will be seen, with a marked though probably undesigned emphasis, to
the use of the right hand in all his active manipulations. Its minute
details are in other respects full of interest from the light we may
assume them to throw on the method pursued by the primitive implement
makers of the earliest Stone Age. Dr. Evans describes and figures a
class of flint tools recovered from time to time, the edges of which,
blunted and worn at both ends, suggest to his experienced eye their
probable use for chipping out arrow-heads and other small implements
of flint, somewhat in the fashion detailed above, with the tool of
deer’s horn. To those accordingly he applies the name of flaking
tools, or fabricators. But whether fashioned by means of flint or horn
fabricator, it is to be noted that the material to be operated upon
has to be held in one hand, while the tool is dexterously manipulated
with the other. Signor Craveri, whose long residence in Mexico gave him
very favourable opportunities for observing the process of the native
workers in obsidian, remarks that, when the Indians “wish to make an
arrow or other instrument of a splinter of obsidian, they take the
piece in the left hand, and hold grasped in the other a small goat’s
horn. They set this piece of obsidian upon the horn, and dexterously
pressing it against the point of it, while they give the horn a gentle
movement from right to left, and up and down, they disengage from it
frequent chips; and in this way obtain the desired form.”[1] Again, in
an account communicated to Sir Charles Lyell by Mr. Cabot, of the mode
of procedure of the Shasta Indian arrow-makers, after describing the
detachment of a piece from the obsidian pebble with the help of an
agate chisel, he thus proceeds: “Holding the piece against the anvil
with thumb and finger of his left hand, he commenced a series of blows,
every one of which chipped off fragments of the brittle substance.”
The patient artificer worked upwards of an hour before he succeeded
in producing a perfect arrow-head. His ingenious skill excited the
admiration of the spectator, who adds the statement that among the
Indians of California arrow-making is a distinct profession, in which
few attain excellence.
[1] Translated from Gastaldi. See Evans’s _Stone Implements_, p. 36.
The point noticeable here in reference to the accounts given by the
various observers is the uniform assumption of right-handedness. Mr.
Redding, Signor Craveri, and Mr. Cabot not only agree in describing
the block of obsidian as held in the left hand, while the tools are
employed in the right hand to fashion it into shape; but the whole
language, especially in the description given by Signor Craveri,
assumes right-handedness as not only the normal, but the invariable
characteristic of the worker in stone. In reality, however, an
ingenious investigator, Mr. F. H. Cushing of the Smithsonian
Institution, while engaged in a series of tentative experiments
to determine the process of working in flint and obsidian, had his
attention accidentally called to the fact that the primitive implements
of the Stone Age perpetuate for us a record of the use of one or
the other hand in their manufacture. With the instinctive zeal of
youthful enthusiasm Mr. Cushing, while still a boy on his father’s
farm in Western New York, carried out a systematic series of flint
workings with a view to ascertain for himself the process by which
the ancient arrow-makers fashioned the flint implements that then
excited his interest. After repeated failures in his attempts to chip
the flint into the desired shape by striking off fragments with a
stone hammer, he accidentally discovered that small flakes could be
detached from the flint core with great certainty and precision by
pressure with a pointed rod of bone or horn; and, as I have recently
learned from him, the instrument employed by him in those experiments
was the same as that which Dr. John Evans informs me he accidentally
hit upon in his earliest successful efforts at flint-arrow making,
viz. a tooth-brush handle. In thus employing a bone or horn flaker,
the sharp edge of the flake cuts slightly into the bone; and when the
latter is twisted suddenly upward, a small scale flies off at the
point of pressure in a direction which can be foreseen and controlled.
With this discovery the essential process of arrow-making had been
mastered. Spear and arrow-heads could be flaked with the most delicate
precision, with no such liability to fracture as leads to constant
failure in any attempt to chip even the larger and ruder spear or
axe-heads into shape. The hammer-stone only suffices for the earlier
processes, including the detachment of the flake from the rough flint
nodule, and trimming it roughly into the required form, preparatory
to the delicate manipulation of edging, pointing, and notching the
arrow-head. The thinning of the flint-blade is effected by detaching
long thin scales or flakes from the surface by using the flaker like
a chisel and striking it a succession of blows with a hammer-stone.
The marks of this delicate surface-flaking are abundantly manifest on
the highly-finished Danish knives, daggers, and large spear-heads, as
well as upon most other flint implements of Europe’s Neolithic Age.
The large spear and tongue-shaped implements of the drift are, on the
contrary, rudely chipped, evidently by the blows of a hammer-stone;
although some of the more delicately fashioned drift implements seem
to indicate that the use of the flint or bone flaker was not unknown
to the men of the Palæolithic Age. But the chipping-stone or hammer
was in constant use at the later period; and the small hammer-stone,
with indentations on its sides for the finger and thumb, and its
rounded edges marked with the evidence of long use in chipping the
flint nodules into the desired forms, abounds both in Europe and
America, wherever the arrow-maker has carried on his primitive art. The
implements in use varied with the available material. A T-shaped wooden
flaker sufficed for the Aztecs in shaping the easily-worked obsidian.
The jasper, chalcedony, and quartz, in like manner, yield readily to
the pressure of a slender flaker of horn; whereas Mr. Cushing notes
that the “tough horn-stone of Western Arctic America could not be
flaked by pressure in the hand, but must be rested against some solid
substance, and flaked by means of an instrument, the handle of which
fitted the palm like that of an umbrella, enabling the operator to
exert a pressure against the substance to be chipped nearly equal to
the weight of the body.” One result of Mr. Cushing’s experiments in
arrow-making was to satisfy him that the greatest difficulty was to
make long narrow surface-flakes. Hence, contrary to all preconceived
ideas, it is easier to form the much-prized, delicately-finished small
arrow-head, with barbs and stem, than larger and seemingly ruder
implements which involve much surface-flaking.
It is interesting to learn of the recovery of this lost art of the
ancient arrow-makers by a series of tentative experiments independently
pursued by different observers. Before Mr. Cushing’s attention had
been directed to any of the descriptions of the process of modern
flint-workers, now familiar to us, he aimed at placing himself in the
same condition as the primitive manufacturer of Europe’s Stone Age,
or of the ancient Mound Builders of North America, devoid of metallic
tools, and with the flint, obsidian, jasper, or hornstone, as the
most available material out of which to fashion nearly all needful
implements. He set to work accordingly with no other appliances than
such sticks and variously shaped stones as could be found on the banks
of the streams where he sought his materials. The results realise to
us, in a highly interesting way, the earliest stages in the training
of the self-taught workman of the Palæolithic Age. After making
various implements akin to the most rudely fashioned examples from the
river-drift or the old flint pits, by means of chipping one flint or
stone with another, he satisfied himself that no amount of chipping,
however carefully practised, would produce surfaces like the best of
those which he was trying to imitate. He accordingly assumed that there
must be some other process unknown to him. By chance he tried pressure
with the point of a stick, instead of chipping with a stone, and the
mystery was solved. He had hit on nearly the same method already
described as in use by Aztecs, Eskimos, and Red Indians; and found
that he could fashion the fractured flint or obsidian into nearly any
shape that he desired. As has been already noted, Mr. Cushing, like Dr.
Evans, resorted subsequently to the easily available tool furnished
by the handle of a tooth-brush. Having thus mastered the secret of
the old flint-workers, he succeeded before long in the manufacture
of well-finished arrows, spear-heads, and daggers of flint, closely
resembling the products of the primitive workmen both of the Old and
the New World.
Thus far the results accord with other investigations; but in the
course of his operations Mr. Cushing also noted this fact, that the
grooves produced by the flaking of the flint or obsidian all turned
in one direction. This proved to be due to the constant use of his
right hand. When the direction of pressure by the bone or stick was
reversed, the result was apparent in the opposite direction of the
grooves. So far as his observations then extended, he occasionally
found an arrow-head or other primitive stone implement with the
flake grooves running from left to right, showing, as he believed,
the manipulation of a left-handed workman; but, from the rarity of
their occurrence, it might be concluded that, as a rule, prehistoric
man was right-handed. When Mr. Cushing reported the results of those
investigations into the arts of the Stone Age, at a meeting of the
Anthropological Society of Washington in May 1879, Professor Mason
confirmed from his own observation the occurrence of flint implements
indicating by the reversed direction of the bevelling that they were
produced by left-handed workmen. Mr. Cushing further notes that
“arrow-making is accompanied by great fatigue and profuse perspiration.
It has a prostrating effect upon the nervous system, which shows itself
again in the direction of fracture. The first fruits of the workman’s
labour, while still fresh and vigorous, can be distinguished from the
implements produced after he had become exhausted at his task; and it
is thus noteworthy that on an unimpressible substance like flint even
the moods and passions of long-forgotten centuries may be found thus
traced and recorded.”
In an ingenious brochure by Mr. Charles Reade, styled “The Coming
Man,” specially aiming at the development in the rising generation
of the use of the left hand, so that the man of the future shall be
ambidextrous or “either-handed,” he remarks: “There certainly is
amongst mankind a vast weight of opinion against my position that
man is by nature as either-handed as an ape; and that custom should
follow nature. The majority believe the left arm and hand inferior
to the right in three things: power, dexterity, and dignity. Nor is
this notion either old-fashioned or new-fangled. It is many thousand
years old; and comes down by unbroken descent to the present day.”
The writer then goes on to affirm: “It has never existed amongst rank
barbarians; it is not indicated in the genuine flint instruments; but
only in those which modern dexterity plants in old strata, to delight
and defraud antiquarians; and the few primitive barbarians that now
remain, living relics of the Stone Age, use both arms indifferently.”
The conclusions here assumed as established by evidence derived
from the study of “the genuine flint instruments” imply, I presume,
that they do embody indications of right and left-hand manipulation
in nearly equal proportions; whereas the forgeries of the modern
“Flint Jack” all betray evidence of right-handed manufacture, and of
consequent modernness. This, however, must have been set forth as a
mere surmise; for, as now appears, it is in conflict with the results
of careful investigations directed to the products of the primitive
flint workers. The opinion adopted by Mr. Cushing, after repeated
observation and tentative experiment, is that primitive man was,
as a rule, right-handed. The evidence adduced is insufficient for
an absolute determination of the question; but any strongly-marked
examples of the left-handed workman’s art thus far observed among
palæolithic flint implements appear to be exceptional. No higher
authority than Dr. John Evans can be appealed to in reference to the
manipulations of the primitive flint-worker, and, in writing to me on
the subject, he remarks: “I think that there is some evidence of the
flint-workers of old having been right-handed; the particular twist,
both in some palæolithic implements, as in one in my own possession
from Hoxne, and in some American rifled arrow-heads, being due to the
manner of chipping, and being most in accordance with their being
held in the left hand and chipped with the right.” In the detailed
description, given in his _Ancient Stone Implements of Great Britain_,
of the example from Hoxne above referred to, Dr. John Evans remarks:
“It presents the peculiarity, which is by no means uncommon in ovate
implements, of having the side edges not in one plane, but forming a
sort of ogee curve. In this instance the blade is twisted to such an
extent that a line drawn through the two edges near the point is at
an angle of at least 45° to a line through the edges at the broadest
part of the implement. I think,” he adds, “that this twisting of the
edges was not in this case intended to serve any particular purpose,
but was rather the accidental result of the method pursued in chipping
the flint into its present form.”[2] A similar curvature is seen in
a long-pointed implement from Reculver, in the collection of Mr. J.
Brent, F.S.A., and again in another large example of this class, from
Hoxne in Suffolk, presented to the Society of Antiquaries of London
upwards of eighty years ago. This, as Dr. Evans notes, exhibits the
same peculiarity of the twisting of the edges so markedly, and indeed
so closely resembles the specimen in his own collection, that they
might have been made by the same hand. Of another example, from Santon
Downham, near Hetford, Suffolk, almond-shaped, and with dendritic
markings in evidence of its palæolithic date, Dr. Evans remarks: “It
is fairly symmetrical in contour with an edge all round, which is
somewhat blunted at the base. This edge, however, is not in one plane,
but considerably curved, so that when seen sideways it forms an ogee
curve;” and he adds: “I have other implements of the same, and of
more pointed forms, with similarly curved edges, both from France and
other parts of England, but whether this curvature was intentional
it is impossible to say. In some cases it is so marked that it can
hardly be the result of accident; and the curve is, so far as I have
observed, almost without exception [Illustration: backwards S], and not
[Illustration: S]. If not intentional, the form may be the result of
all the blows by which the implement was finally chipped out having
been given on the one face on one side, and on the opposite on the
other.”[3] In other words, the implement-maker worked throughout with
the flaker in the same hand; and that hand, with very rare exceptions,
appears to have been the right hand. The evidence thus far adduced
manifestly points to the predominance of right-handed men among the
palæolithic flint-workers. For if the flint-arrow maker, working
apart, and with no motive, therefore, suggested by the necessity of
accommodating himself to a neighbouring workman, has habitually used
the right hand from remote palæolithic times, it only remains to
determine the origin of a practice too nearly invariable to have been
the result of accident. This, however, has long eluded research; or
thus far, at least, has been ascribed to very different causes. But to
any who regards the special inquiry now under review as one worthy of
further consideration, the class of implements referred to offers a
trustworthy source of evidence whereby to arrive at a relative estimate
of the prevalent use of one or the other hand among uncultured races of
men, alike in ancient and modern times.
[2] _Ancient Stone Implements_, p. 520.
[3] _Ancient Stone Implements_, p. 501.
Dr. Evans has figured and described what he believes to have been the
flaking tools or fabricators in earliest use among the flint-workers
for chipping out arrow-heads and other small implements. They are
fashioned of the same material; and some of them are carefully wrought
into a form best adapted for being held in the hand of the workman.
Specimens of the bone arrow-flakers in use by the Eskimo workers in
flint are also familiar to us. Different forms of those instruments
are engraved among the illustrations to _The Ancient Stone Implements,
Weapons, and Ornaments of Great Britain_, from specimens in the
Blackmore Museum and the Christy Collection;[4] and Dr. Evans describes
the mode of using them as witnessed by Sir Edward Belcher among the
Eskimo of Cape Lisburne, but without reference to the point now alluded
to. Dr. John Rae, who, like myself, is inveterately left-handed,
informs me that, without having taken particular notice of Indian
or Eskimo practice in the use of one or the other hand, he observed
that some among them were markedly ambidextrous. But, he adds, “from
a curious story told me by an Eskimo about a bear throwing a large
piece of ice at the head of a walrus, and telling me as a noteworthy
fact that he threw it with the left forepaw, as if it were something
unusual, it would seem to indicate that left-handedness was not very
common among the Eskimos.” It shows, at any rate, that the Eskimo noted
the use of the left paw as something diverse from the normal practice.
But if the deductions based on the experimental working in flint are
well founded, the test supplied by the direction of the flaking grooves
of obsidian, chert, or flint implements will be equally available
for determining the prevalent use of one or other hand by the Eskimo
and other modern savage races, as among those of the Palæolithic and
Neolithic Periods.
[4] _Ancient Stone Implements_, figs. 8, 9, 10.