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In his report on the flints found in the gravel pit at Belle-Assise, Breuil (1910, pp. 403–404) stated: “From the fact that the flakes found in connection bore signs of retouching, it can be concluded that retouching, bulbed flakes, and blocks with conchoidal flake scars were produced here exclusively by compression within the interior of the soil. . . . If one attempted to reproduce, on an intact block of flint, either the retouching or the flaking, one would have to employ the processes of percussion and vigorous compression used in working stone.”

This might lead one to wonder whether geological pressure was in fact the actual cause for the observed effects. A modern authority (L. Patterson 1983) stated that pressure flaking very rarely produces clearly marked bulbs of percussion. It is not apparent from Breuil’s drawings how well developed the bulbs of percussion are on his specimens. Breuil (1910, p. 388) himself described the bulbs of percussion as only “more or less” clearly present. But if the bulbs are well developed, this would, according to Patterson’s view, make it unlikely that they were produced by geological pressure.

In general, the bulb of percussion, as the name itself indicates, is taken as a sign of intentional percussive fracturing. But perhaps Breuil was correct in his supposition that geological pressure flaking could produce clear bulbs and retouching, like those found on implements made by humans. In that case, no crudely chipped stone object should be recognized as a genuine tool unless found directly in contact with other unambiguous evidence of human involvement. Applying this standard across the board, one would have to reject numerous conventionally accepted stone tools, such as the many crude Oldowan tools of East Africa that were not found in the immediate vicinity of hominid fossils.

As we shall see, Breuil (Section 3.4.2), like S. Hazzeldine Warren in England (Section 3.3.7), found Eocene objects resembling not only crude eoliths but advanced tools of the Late Stone Age. Breuil and Warren nevertheless believed that all of these toollike specimens—the most sophisticated as well as the crudest— were the product of natural geological forces. This implies that even specimens resembling very good Paleolithic implements should not be securely identified as tools unless found along with definite signs of human habitation. Of course, if geological pressure can produce very good “tools,” then even if such “tools” were found along with signs of human habitation, one could not tell if they were produced by nature or by humans. In order to satisfy skeptics like Breuil, it seems one would have to find even the best sort of implement clutched in the fossil fingers of a human hand.

But perhaps Breuil was wrong to suppose that geological pressure caused the bulbs of percussion on the many specimens he found in the Eocene at BelleAssise. His only evidence was the few bulbed flakes he found directly in contact with parent blocks of flint. Here we can refer to J. Reid Moir’s explanation of the same phenomenon (Section 3.3.6). F. N. Haward had found flakes in contact with parent blocks of flint in the stone bed below the Norwich Crag. Haward said they were removed by geological pressure alone, but Moir suggested the following. Before the flints were covered by the deposit, intentional (presumably human) percussion caused the formation of incipient bulbed flakes, which were later completely removed from the parent blocks by geological pressure or heat.

In any case, taking Breuil’s specimens as examples of pressure flaking, there is yet another problem to consider. It can be safely assumed that the specimens pictured by Breuil are among the better examples of flints found with flakes in contact with the parent block. But in studying the illustrations (Figures 3.20, 3.21), it is readily apparent that the flaking and retouching are extremely crude, far more so than that manifest on the other specimens of cores