n culture--for civilization is the product of labor.
Whenever a people from necessity or choice abandon one form of labor for
another demanding less skill to triumph over nature, a retrogression in
culture is inevitable.<26>

From what we have stated as to the use of flint we can readily see that
it was a valuable material. Sections where it was found in abundance
would as certainly become thickly populated as the iron and gold regions
of our own day. In Paleolithic times the supply of flint was mostly
obtained from the surface and in the gravel of rivers. In Neolithic
times men had learned to mine for flint. Flint occurs in nodules in the
chalk. Near Brandon, England, was discovered a series of these workings.
They consist of shafts connected together by galleries. These pits vary
in size from twenty to sixty feet in diameter, and in some cases were
as much as thirty feet deep. From the bottom of these shafts they would
excavate as far as they dared to the sides. They made no use of timbers
to support the roof, and so these side excavations were not of great
extent. In these old workings the miners sometimes left behind them
their tools. The principal one was a pick made of deer's horn, as is
here represented. Besides these, they had chisels of bone and antler.
The marks of stone hatchets on the sides of the gallery are visible.

Illustration of Miner's Pick.---------------

In one instance the roof had caved in, evidently during the night, and
on clearing out the gallery near the end where the roof stood firm,
there were found the implements of the workmen, just as they were left
at the close of the day's work; and in one place on the pick, covered
with chalk dust, was still to be seen the marks of the workman's hand.
How many years, crowded with strange scenes, have swept over England
since that chalky impression was made! The surface of the earth is a
palimpsest, on which each stage of culture has been written over the
faint, almost obliterated, records of the past. Not only the living man,
who has left there the impression of his hand has passed away, but also
his people and his culture. And now it is only here and there that we
catch a faint tracing underlying our later civilization, by which we
reconstruct the history of these far-away times.

Nothing would be more natural than that where flint was found in
abundance a regular manufactory of implements would be established. Such
was the case at Cissbury, w