Note 7 — Chapter VI · Industry, Commerce, and Social Organization; Fights, Wounds and Trepanation.

Hatchets, daggers, and nuclei, or as they are characteristically called by the country people livres de beurre, from Grand-Pressigny, have been picked up in the bed of the Seine, at Limagne in Auvergne, in Brittany, at Saint Médard near Bordeaux, on the banks of the Meuse, and even as far north as the Shetland Islands. At Concise was found red coral from the Mediterranean, whilst the yellow amber of the Baltic was picked up in the Lake Dwellings of Switzerland, beneath the dolmens of Brittany, in sepulchral caves, such as those of Oyes (Marne) or Lombrives (Ariège), beneath the megalithic tomb of La Roquette, at Saint Pargoue (Hérault) beneath the dolmen of Grailhe (Gard), at Malpas, and at Baume (Ardèche).7 These are nearly all Neolithic tombs, though some few of them may date from the beginning of the Bronze age; but the cave-men of France owned amber even earlier than this, for five fragments have been found in the Aurensan Cave near Bagnères-de-Bigorre, which was inhabited in Palæolithic times. Jadeite and nephrite8 are met with in the Lake Dwellings of Switzerland and Bavaria, as in the caves of Liguria and Sardinia; chloromelanite9 in France, and obsidian10 in Lorraine, in the island of Pianosa and in the Cyclades. We have already spoken of the calaïte11 found beneath the dolmens of Brittany, and we may add now that it has also been found in the caves of Portugal and beneath the megalithic monuments of the south of France.