Abstract
THE fact that in Belgium flint was in certain districts largely worked during Neolithic times, for the manufacture of hatchets and other implements, has long been well known. The mines in the chalk near Mons, from which the rough blocks of flint were procured by the ancient flint-workers, have frequently been described, and bear a close analogy with the old workings at Grimes' Graves, near Brandon, and with the pits near that place, still being sunk by the flint-knappers of the present day. The fields in the neighbourhood of Mons have their surface strewn with roughly-chipped hatchets, and in other districts the occurrence of worked flints has been not unfrequently noted. In a memoir, recently published in the Bulletin de la Société d' Anthropologie de Bruxelles (Tome xi. 1892–93), M. G. Cumont has placed on record his discovery of two important Neolithic stations at Verrewmckel and Rhode-Saint-Genêse, neither of which places is far from the main road from Brussels to Charleroi, while both lie at but a short distance from the field of Waterloo. The forest of Soignes extended in early times over the whole district, and though both stations are on promontories of high land, there are or were, in the neighbourhood of each, springs or ponds from which to obtain a supply of water and, possibly, of fish.
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E., J. Neolithic Discoveries in Belgium. Nature 49, 227 (1894). https://doi.org/10.1038/049227a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/049227a0