Fountains in the Sand by Norman Douglas — Read

This collecting of flint implements grows upon one at Gafsa; it is in the air. And I find that quite a number of persons have anticipated me in this amusement, and even written tomes upon the subject -- it is ever thus, when one thinks to have made a scientific discovery. These stones are scattered all over the plain, and Monsieur Couillault has traced the site of several workshops -- _ateliers_ -- of prehistoric weapons near Sidi Mansur, which lies within half a mile of Gafsa, whence he has extracted -- or rather retrieved, for the flints merely lie upon the ground -- quantities of instruments of every shape; among them, some saws and a miniature spade.

My collection of these relics, casually picked up here and there, already numbers two hundred pieces, and illustrates every period of those early ages -- uncouth battle-axes and spear-points; fine needles, apparently used for sewing skins together; the so-called laurel-leaves, as thin as card-board; knife-blades; instruments for scraping beast-hides -- all of flint. What interests me most, are certain round throwing-stones; a few are flat on both sides, but others, evidently the more popular shape, are flat below and rise to a cone above. Of these latter, I have a series of various sizes; the largest are for men's hands, but there are smaller ones, not more than eleven centimetres round, for the use of children: one thinks of the fierce little hands that wielded them, these many thousand years ago. Even now the natives will throw by preference with a stone of this disk-like shape -- the cone pointing downwards.