A HISTORY OF ESSEX Other Essex examples have been found in the Roding and smaller river valleys, while some finds have been made in the gravel on higher ground. Coeval with the mammoth and Rhinoceros tichorkinus, now long extinct, and with the reindeer, hippopotamus, bison, hyaena and other animals no longer habitant in England, man waged war against beasts of forest and fen, his weapons being of wood or stone. The paucity in variety of weapons indicates a savage condition in which man's wants were few ; while the chipped, but never ground or polished, tools show the narrow limit of his ideas of fabrication ; but within those lines his works were excellent for their purpose, and dis- play judgment in the selection of material and skill in shaping it. Flint was in most cases the material used for the palaeolithic weapons which have survived, and the varieties consist mainly of flakes, oval cutters and tongue or pear-shaped pointed implements ; no relics which can with certainty be described as arrowheads have been discovered, but the sharply-pointed little triangular flints may have been used for arrow- heads or served as javelin points. The flakes, which probably were used as scraping and cutting instruments, are of much the same character as those of the neolithic period to be presently mentioned, but generally speaking they may be described as larger, coarser, thicker and broader. 1 The tools referred to as oval cutters partake sometimes of more circular shape ; they are flat in form and usually carefully chipped round the edge. It has been suggested that they were frequently used as missiles, but probably their use was multiplex (fig. i). The implements which are best described as tongue-shaped or pear- shaped are the most characteristic weapons of palaeolithic man, serving probably as his constant companions in war, the chase and everyday life. They vary considerably in size, as in gradations of form, though all may be regarded as pointed implements. Most of our examples have a rounded butt, from which the sides taper. Some were probably hafted to handles, others possibly fixed to the end of wooden spears, but most would be suitable for use in the hand alone. Though not exactly of the celt or chisel form, these weapons may have been the embryo of the neolithic celt, which in its turn was the parent of bronze and iron axes, hatchets and adzes (fig. 2). A ' palaeolithic floor ' at Little or East Thurrock provided Mr. Worthington G. Smith with a fossilized antler, showing an artificial fracture produced by the straight edge of a palaeolithic weapon, but it is rare to find relics of man of this period in any material other than stone. 2 Cave dwellings of later palaeolithic men have in some parts of the kingdom yielded a great variety of weapons of stone and of bone, and examples of rudimentary art in incised pictures, but we have discovered 1 Evans' Ancient Stone Implements (1897), p. 642. 2 Wood has been found on the palaeolithic ground of the Lea gravels, and may have been used for stakes, clubs, hut roof timbers or other purposes. 262
