Note 16 — Chapter III

This woollen cloth must be regarded as a woven texture, but whether it were woven in so artificial a machine as a loom may be questioned. A great variety of contrivances have been used for weaving, i.e., crossing alternately threads passed in opposite directions, the warp and the woof, by what are called savage races. Still it is not at all improbable that a people so advanced in pastoral habits, possessed some machine for weaving, bearing a relation to a primitive loom. Both warp and woof are composed, as might be expected, of a simply spun thread of one strand. Perforated stones are found in British and Danish barrows, and perforated pieces of earthenware in the Swiss Lake villages, even of the stone period, which are regarded as spindle-whorls.