La Madeleine. They are found in prehistoric Egyptian graves, along
with Neolithic knives and lances. As a technical advance on flaking
by blows or pressure, grinding and incidental polishing of flint
implements are regarded as characteristic of the Neolithic period;
and the practice may have started in areas devoid of flint, where it
was necessary to utilize local material that could not be flaked like
flint. In Europe generally, polished celts belong to the Megalithic
or latest division of the Neolithic, but this implement appeared much
earlier, and in a sense succeeded the Palaeolithic hand-axe. The
latter is not known to have been hafted, and its working edges were
at the pointed end; whereas in Neolithic times the implement had
become an axe in the modern sense, with the pointed end inserted in a
haft, and the cutting edge removed to the broader end. There are many
other Neolithic types, used with or without a haft, and only a small
proportion were finished by grinding on sandstone.




CHAPTER II


GREECE

[See the diagrams of flint implements, [Illustration II] of pottery,
[Illustration III]; and of alphabets, [Illustration IV]]

The Periods into which the subject must be divided are roughly as
follows:
I. Prehistoric down to about 1000 B.C.