# The antiquity of man

L. Péringuey

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L. Péringuey. The antiquity of man. Anniversary Meeting of the Royal Society of South Africa, South African Association, Mar 1913, Cape Town, South Africa. hal-03555100

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Royal Society of South Africa.

D

The ANNIVERSARY MEETING was held on WEDNESDAY, 19th MARCH, at 8.15 p.m., in the BOARD ROOM of the SOUTH AFRICAN ASSOCIATION, CHURCH SQUARE, CAPE TOWN.

The President, Dr. L. PÉRINGUEY, was in the Chair.

The Hon. General Secretary's Report was submitted and adopted with the following addition :—

£50 to the Hon. Paul A. Methuen for the study of taxonomy and distribution of the lower vertebrates and several groups of the invertebrates of Great Namaqualand.

The Hon. Treasurer's Report was submitted and adopted.

The following were elected members of Council for the year 1913.

Dr. L. PÉRINGUEY,
Dr. L. CRAWFORD,
Dr. J. C. BEATTIE,
Dr. A. JASPER ANDERSON,
Dr. W. A. CALDECOTT,
Dr. G. S. CORSTORPHINE,
Dr. J. K. E. HALM,
Mr. S. S. HOUGH,
Dr. C. F. JURITZ,
Dr. R. MÄRLOTH,
Dr. E. T. MELLOR,
Dr. E. WARREN.

Dr. L. PÉRINGUEY was elected President,
Dr. L. CRAWFORD, Hon. Treasurer, and
Dr. J. C. BEATTIE, Hon. Gen. Secretary
for the year 1913

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The President then gave an address entitled :—

“THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN.”

INTRODUCTION.

I had at first thought to give you, to-night, a retrospect of what is known of the lithic industry, or stone implement-making in South Africa, and its bearing towards not only the Antiquity of man in this part of the world, but also to the Antiquity of a certain native race of which a few pure bred individuals, only, are now left, namely the Bushman.

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8

P. 197.
I find it, however, impossible, to condense the information on record in an address, nor would it be possible to bring out my points to your notice without a long series of lantern slides. I propose therefore to restrict myself to a resumé of the present knowledge of the Antiquity of Man. During the last fifteen years discoveries of such importance have occurred that the prehistorian is now fronted with tangible facts, where a few years back he had to be satisfied with hypotheses. Let it be said at once that several of these hypotheses have been justified by the newly discovered facts. On the other hand, certain doctrines which were considered as firmly established are at present seriously assailed.

I shall now proceed to explain broadly the stages or divisions during which man produced artefacts in the shape of stone implements, relies of his skill that led not only to his being discovered, but allowed us to follow his increasing mental development, before his skeleton was brought to light.

These stages are: the Mesvinian or Strepyan, still very much discussed; the Chellean and Acheulean forming the Lower Palaeolithic; the Mousterian or Middle Palaeolithic; and the Aurignacian, Solutrian and Magdalenian, all three belonging to the Upper Palaeolithic.

The reasons for these divisions are as follows: In the Chellean, Europe was a warm country with a mild and damp climate. The fauna was characterised by the presence of the Hippopotamus and the *Rhinoceros merckii* (the nearest ally of our White Rhinoceros), and *Elephas Antiquus* which is a nearer ally to the Indian than to the present African form.

The Acheulean which follows is closely connected with the Chellean. In most places the fauna is still that of a warm country, but in certain localities arcto-alpine forms belonging to the next stage are also in evidence. The stone implement, the "boucher,"* predominates still, but it is of finer workmanship and is a more efficient tool.

* The "boucher" corresponds to the "celt." This term, proposed by Sollas, should be adopted.

During the Mousterian or Middle Palaeolithic the temperature was lower and the fauna was that of a cold, moist climate. The *Mammoth*, an animal of 16 to 18 feet in height, takes the place of its still larger predecessor *Elephas Antiquus*; with it is a woolly Rhinoceros, *Rhinoceros tichorrhinus*. The Acheulean boucher is still occasionally, but seldom, met with. The Mousterian implement is usually chipped on one face only, the reverse side shows well-nigh invariably the convex node called "bulb of percussion"; the edges of the implements are often carefully re-touched; the flakes, obtained as a bye-product, are used again for smaller tools, etc. It is in the Middle Palaeolithic that the Neanderthal type of man has been found.

The classification of the three Upper Palaeolithic stages is a very difficult one. In the Aurignacian age the cold fauna of the Mousterian has gone, and its representatives are very much reduced in number. An amelioration of climate has evidently taken place. Man has so much progressed mentally or by contact that the implements are distinguished by a variety of forms; bone is being used.

In the Solutrian the climate is no longer as mild as it was in the Aurignacian; implements of stone are being made for newly developed requirements; bone and ivory are in common use.

In the Magdalenian Age, the lowering of temperature becomes a dry cold which makes itself keenly felt. This last division is characterised by the use of the Reindeer horn.

During these three periods, the severity of the climate, especially in winter, induced man to seek shelter to avoid partly its rigour. This shelter he found in the caves or grottoes formed

naturally in calcareous formations, or under hanging rocks. His mental faculties were taxed to their utmost to resist the *ferae naturae* which became more and more numerous (but he did this much more likely by craft than by brute force), and also to obtain from them food, and garments as protection from the cold. How long did these three periods, called the period of the Reindeer, last, or by what interval were they separated is still an unsolved problem; but it is in the Aurignacian age that slender, even delicate tools of ivory and bone make their appearance; stone lance heads admirably worked on each side, arrow-heads with peduncles, bodkins, saws, etc., are testimony to man's increasing industry and skill.

Not only had by now the sense of art arisen in him, but he expressed it in frescoes of admirable colouration, in sculptures on ivory or stone, in gravings, petroglyphs and glyptics which are only equalled by those of another living race, the name of which you have already in your mind, namely, the Bushman.

There is not going to be anything very new about this exposé of the Antiquity of Man, except that it is nearly up to date, but it is a preliminary attempt to try and co-relate, if possible, the palaeolithic stone age of Southern Africa with that of Europe and of part of Asia.

Unfortunately the most important element in the chronology of the European divisions; namely, the Great Ice Age, is totally wanting in South Africa. There the "genial episode" the "period of advance," the "glacial episode" and the "period of retreat," these four parts of the oscillation of climate of the third and fourth glacial epochs which have played such a role in the succession of faunas and of implements in the North, cannot be of any assistance to us in the South. It may therefore be assumed that the Pleistocene epoch in South Africa has not altered much the land features, and that the temperature or climate has been, from the inception of this period little different from what it is to-day.

And on that account is in my opinion explained the contem-
poraneity here of the Chellean, Acheulean, Mousterian and Aurig-
nacian lithic forms, a fact which can no more be doubted than the
survival of these forms until comparatively a few years back.

THE EOLITHS.

It is obvious that the stone industry must have had a be-
ginning, and that an almond shaped boucher was not evolved by
the hand of primitive man in the finished state represented by this
Saint Acheul boucher of flint, or this Stellenbosch boucher of quart-
zite, now before you.

That there must have been a graduation from the accidental
sharp pointed or sharp edged flake, which to me is a matter of
faith, to the carefully trimmed amygdaloid tools I am showing you
is to man's mind, trained at all events as our mind is now, equally
obvious.

Working therefore on this inductive method certain Prehis-
torians have tried to find in more or less amorphous flints or par-
tially split nodules of flint the predecessor of the boucher or rac-
loir of the palaeolithic type in position on geological horizons which
would throw back the antiquity of man to the Oligocene (if not the
Eocene) and the Upper Miocene, thereby endowing Anthropomor-
phous Apes—at least so they must be considered in the light of
our present Palaeontological knowledge—with the cunning neces-
sary for the production of artefacts, the utility to them of which
has also never been clearly explained.

I may state at present, that all these so-called precursors of
the lithic industry are invariably made of flint, and of no other
hard material such as quartzite, indurated shale, basalt or hard
volcanic rocks, or quartz, materials of which the majority of our
South African implements consist. This is a point of great importance.

It was in 1867, not very long therefore after Boucher de Perthes' interpretation of the human artefacts found in the Somme Valley (France) had been accepted as valid (namely, that there existed in Europe a race of men contemporaneous with the Reindeer and the Mammoth, that fashioned weapons and tools out of "ragnons de Silex" Nodules of flint) that the problem of the tertiary man was introduced by the discovery of flints at Thenay, in beds of the Upper Oligocene, at the dawn of the Miocene. That is to say, if these implements were accepted as artefacts it would prove that the makers were contemporaries of the *Anthracotherium*, a pachyderm older than the *Mastodon*, an ancestor, but not the first, of the Elephant. To solve the difficulty, a very obvious one, G. de Mortillet suggested that the maker might be an Anthropoid Ape, somewhat like *Dryopithecus*, found in the Miocene of the Geologists. But it is now generally accepted that neither *Dryopithecus* nor *Palacopithecus*, from Siwalik, belong to the human phylum.

Ten years later (1877), were found at Aurillac also in France numerous flints which have undoubtedly the appearance of artefacts. The geological horizon of this locality is undoubtedly that of Upper Miocene Age; and the makers of these artefacts, were they such, would have lived with the *Dinotherium giganteum*, the first horse, *Hipparchon gracile*, the sabre-tooth tiger, *Machairodus*, etc. There again to solve the difficulty, a hypothetical man-monkey or monkey-man is invented by Mortillet, to serve as an explanation, namely, *Homosimus lamesi*. From that time war began to rage between these Archaeologists, who, ascribing these artefacts to man, relegated him to the Miocene, and those who saw only in the so-called "silex tertiaires" flint nodules washed from the upper layers and broken by the waters of the Tortonian river. Subsidence of deposits, great variation of temperature, and especially frost producing the well-known "éclatement" or splitting of nodules which are not necessarily completely homogenous, and other causes, of which violent natural shock, or projection against an equally hard body may prove to have been a most important one, such, according to these adversaries of Miocene man, are the causes which produced the artefact appearance of the Thenay flints. Similar discoveries followed in the valley of the Tagus, in 1871; the horizon being a little more recent than that of the Thenay, and characterised also by the presence of the *Hipparchon*, the ancestor of the horse, etc.

In 1899, Mr. B. Harrison brought to the notice of Antiquarians the famous "plateau implements" found in gravels capping the high plateau of Kent. That this plateau is very ancient is admitted by all; it is lying at a higher level than any of the existing terraces. By some the deposits are looked upon as pre-glacial, by others as belonging to the Pliocene. The term "olith" was invented for these very amorphous flints, and the controversy about their having been artificially dressed, or having come to their present form by natural agencies has not yet ceased, although its heat greatly cooled down when M. M. Boule, who it must be said in fairness, always opposed the theory of the oliths of Aurillac and Thenay, showed pretty conclusively that mechanical agents do easily and naturally transform flint nodules into "oliths." His demonstration appeared in L'Anthropologio, 1905, and can be summed up as follows:-

At Guervilles, near Mantes (France) is a factory where cement is prepared by means of rotary machines moving in a tub filled with chalk and plastic clay. When the process is over the fragments of flint left in the residue exhibit all the shapes and forms claimed to be artefacts by the partisans of the eolithic doctrine. Not only are the "crescent-shaped," "hollow-end" "horse-shoe" scrapers of the Kent oliths, or of the Oligocene of certain parts of Belgium

reproduced; but also, and this is perhaps more important, rough scrapers of the Magdalenian type, and some with a neolithic facies. The speed of the water, at the periphery of the vats was found to be only four metres a second, a speed that cannot compare with that of the large European rivers in flood. It is a matter of knowledge, or at least accepted as such, that the torrential floods of to-day cannot also compare with the torrential forces of the quaternary (Pleistocene) rivers.

I have given elsewhere my reasons for not accepting the alleged eolithic theory with regard to some water-worn quartzitic examples from Pretoria, but I may here give my experience of the implements of a siliceous texture (chalcedony) occurring at or near the Victoria Falls, where this material prevailed; at least I found no other.

Among many crescent-shaped, undoubted tools, worn by the attrition of sand, which has now disappeared, to the great surprise of my companion, Mr. Maufe, of the Rhodesian Geological Survey, in whose company I was, we found several nuclei of large size, and also circular, disc-like pieces, of not much thickness and certainly not exhibiting the famous "bulb of concussion" in which I still believe. My companion exclaimed "These are split by the sunheat." I had come to this conclusion an hour before, as I was groping my way among the two surface deposits we encountered. Maufe was looking for the geological features. I was interested in the lithic industry.

Now, chert, whether chalcedony or under any other name, is a siliceous formation, just like flint, only that the latter is an accumulation of slica round an organic remain, whereas the latter is not, but the texture is nearly alike; and the influence of natural causes, heat in the present case, frost in that of the European or Palaearctic region, had produced an effect nearly similar; but not quite identical all the same, because discoidal pieces are extremely rare in European Palaeoliths or Neoliths. Moreover crescent-shaped pieces (the pieces an encoche of the French) are there quite common, and were it not that real artefacts were found together, as testified by these not easily expressed minutiae which seldom lure the trained Archaeologist from the path of orthodox righteousness, one might have felt inclined to imagine he had discovered a new site of Kent Plateau implements.

If we now recapitulate the details of the question of the so-called oliths, we shall find that the then numerous, but now greatly reduced believers in the authenticity of these artefacts found in remote times known to Geologists as, if not Eocene proper (the dawn of recent times), at least Oligocene, Miocene and Pliocene horizons or formations, had to call in support of their theory the existence of these geological times of Anthropomorphic Apes, or Simian-like Men.

No one, now, pays much attention to the hypothetical presence of a semi-human precursor, *Homosimus*, to explain the oligocene "flints," and the once invoked *Dryopithecus* (a monkey of the middle Miocene, the remnants of which were found not very far from the Thenay and Aurillae "flints"), is now, as stated before, not only excluded from the genealogy of the human race, but is considered to be very inferior to some of the present Apes.

But the theory of the Simian origin of man was still being entertained by palaeontologically minded Antiquarians, when in 1894, Dr. Dubois, a Dutch Palaeontologist, unearthed at Trinil, in the island of Java, the remains, unfortunately very incomplete, of an animal to which he gave the name of *Pithecanthropus*, or Monkey-Man, which according to him was the missing link said to have been announced by Darwin, although I cannot find the latter ever said so in formal terms, and hinted at it is also said, by Lamark, although there also I cannot find evidence of the proposition.

It is somewhat unfortunate that more remnants of the *Pithecanthropus* have not been found as yet; and its position in the

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scale of humanity is certainly not accepted by all competent men as Dr. Eugene Dubois would have liked. Referred at first to the Pliocene, leading us thus to the mythical, but long invoked Tertiary man; it is now relegated on good authority to the lower Quaternary, the beginning at the Pleistocene. Is this fossil of human or simian nature? Is it bridging the interval between man and Anthropoids? A storm of controversy has arisen on this question. There are those who consider it a human ancestor, but not quite human; others as of truly human nature; others again as a large Hylobates, and if such, it is a member of the Simiidae, and therefore a true Ape. Duckworth comes to the conclusion that *Pithecanthropus creicus* "was an anthropoid ape of a degree of cephalisation far superior to any ape now existing; and that in it we possess the nearest likeness yet found of the human ancestor." He agrees that the Trinil fossil was of a stature rather over the average. Keith, however, goes further, and not only does he believe *Pithecanthropus* to be as old as the Pliocene of Europe, or early Pleistocene, but he adds "the characters of the femur leave no doubt, in spite of minor peculiar features, that the fossil man of Java was completely adapted for erect posture and erect progression as the man of to-day. There are no features in it which suggest the slouching gait of Neanderthal man." This is perhaps too affirmative statement with regard to the latter, as we shall see later on. The few pieces found are the calvaria (upper portion of the skull), a femur (thigh-bone), and three teeth. The femur is sufficiently like the human bone for Virchow's affirmation that this thigh bone does not belong to the same individual to whom the calvaria does; the first is that of a Man, the second is that of an Ape.

It should be remembered, however, that the same Virchow decided that the calvaria of the Neanderthal man was that of a human idiot; that Huxley was very careful not to express his opinion, and that Broca, of all Anthropologists or repute, was the only one who, at the time, asserted that this portion of the skull belonged to a primitive man, but a man for all that, and not an ape or an idiot.

A new light has been thrown on the phylogeny of the apes by the discovery in the lower tertiary of the Fayoum, in Egypt, probably Oligocene, of several forms of true Apes, among which one, called by Schlosser *Propliobilhecus*, which does really seem to represent an Anthropomorphic Ape; leading, according to him, to the following evolutive filiation.

*Propliobilhecus*, *Pliopithecus*, *Hylobates*, *Dryopithecus*. Trog-lodytes, *Simia*, *Gorilla*, *Homo* with whom *Pithecanthropus* on characters taken from the jaw (although three teeth are only known) this author considers should mingle.

And thus we are brought back to the contentious Oligocene flints of Thenay, Aurillac, Cromer Forest, Boncelles, etc., etc. Unfortunately for those who hold to the artefact character of these flints, the Oligocene ancestor of man would not have been physically able to chip flints, for its size was almost that of a newly-born baby. Even *Anthropodus* of the lower Pliocene—which Schlosser does not however place in his genealogical list, perhaps because only a tooth of the animal is known—could have hardly exceeded the size of a twelve years old child.

Keith, however, ascribes to Pithecanthropus a height of five feet, six inches. According to Boule the average size of the men of Neandertal type is 1.m. 58.c., or five feet two inches.

But before coming to that Neandertal man, to whom I have found it necessary to allude twice, it is necessary to mention what has been dubbed the "Iconian" stone industry.

Lately there has been found in a bed which is the undisturbed base of the Red Crag, near Ipswich, in Suffolk, flints which the finder, Mr. R. Moir, alleges have been worked by man. They were found in hollows on an eroded surface of London Clay; and it

seems indisputable that this bed in which the flints occur is the undisturbed base of the Red Crag. But it is disputable if these flint implements are artefacts, or whether they come in again in the category of "coliths." Professor Ray Lankester, in a well illustrated memoir just published in the Transactions of the Royal Society, maintains that they are the fabrication of man. They are mostly of what he calls the "eagle-beak or rostro-carinate" type, and possess a form differing entirely from that of any other Palaeolith. He accounts for the glacial scratchings on the implements found by Moir by the conclusion that the basal deposit of the Red Crag is subsequent to the glaciation of the land surface. The "men who made the Sub-Crag implements existed on an extensive land surface which touched the sea line at a spot which is now Suffolk. Probably they were there during a period of mild climate coincident with the deposit of the Coralline crag. The bed in which the implements are found was probably deposited in quite shallow water, the flints being carried to and deposited by ice. The implements characterise a phase of development earlier than any hitherto known by equally indisputable evidence."

It is not necessary to discuss here the arguments adduced by Messrs. Moir and Ray-Lankester. It might be urged that many of the specimens affect forms of the Thenay and Aurillac eoliths; that the peculiar "rostro carinate" shape may be caused by a fault (chink or crevice), in the nucleus; that the striae considered as of glacial origin, might have been produced by the displacement of sand particles on the surface of the flint, as now occurs in geological beds exposed to strong pressure; also that remaniements of that part of the bed are quite possible.

But to me, the main point of importance is that Ray Lankester would bring the Red Crag forward from the Pliocene to the Pleistocene, to make them fit in, I presume, with the lithic culture of the genus Homo.

Whether it will be found equally convenient to rejuvenate the horizons of Thenay, and Aurillac, among others for the place usually assigned to them, namely, Upper Oligocene and Upper Miocene, respectively, is another matter. In a postscript to the said memoir, Ray Lankester mentions worked flints that have been found resting on Eocene clay, upon the sea-shore of Selsea Bill, Sussex; and also of rostro-carinate implements near the deposit of Aurillac, already alluded to. This leads him to state that "there is a good deal of evidence leading one to entertain, at any rate, as a hypothesis to be further tested—the possibility of a community of origin of the Icenian, the Ighthamian and the Aurillician industries. But if Lankester is right in his removal of the Pliocene Red Crag into the Pleistocene because of the implements found there, man's industry would have proven even more useful for Geology, than his skeleton.

We ought to have seen some better proofs than those obtained from flints that may or may not be artefacts, because Reid Moir and Keith have discovered at Ipswich a skeleton which they said represented pre-Boulder Clay man—the said skeleton is said to have been found in glacial sand underlying Boulder Clay; and the publication of a memoir by Smith Woodward, on a skeleton found in the same horizon as the Kent Plateau Eoliths, is announced. It is therefore wise to wait for these forthcoming accounts. Keith, however, says that the Ipswich man differed both from the Heidelberg man and the Java man, and in every point in which he differs from them he approaches modern man." This statement is, a priori, not very reassuring.

## THE PALAEOLITHS.

Let us now see what this Heidelberg Man is. This earliest trace of Neanderthal type of man was discovered in the valley of Neckar, a few miles above the University town of Heidelberg. It
was found in the sands of the Mauer, some three miles and a half from the river. These sands, it is alleged, were laid down in the bed of the ancient river soon after the Pleistocene began. Bones and teeth of an extinct rhinoceros, and of a kind of horse, *Equus stenonis* were found in the same layers, and it is stated that the beds are deeper and much older than the glacial boulder clay. It is therefore claimed that the sands were laid down near the beginning of the Pleistocene, or upper Pliocene. Many people are rather sceptical however about the authenticity given to this deposit, and Sollas very justly remarks that the existence of a horse allied to *Equus stenonis* represented at Chelles itself, can no longer be cited in favour of the Pliocene age of the Heidelberg jaw. Now, in shape and size the Heidelberg mandible shows a condition intermediate to the Anthropoid and the modern human forms. According to Keith "the anthropoid jaw is the primitive one; the mandible is framed to serve the purpose of mastication; the mandible of modern man is modified to serve in speech." The Heidelberg discovery was made in 1907; but as far back as 1856 the famous Neanderthal skeleton had been discovered; unfortunately it was very much injured, but the calvaria, or skull-cap was preserved. So long as this discovery remained single, it could not be adduced as convincing; fortunately other finds of similar nature were made, showing similar peculiarities. To these the name of Neanderthal, or Mousterian Man has been given; and the most complete monogram, that of the man of the "Chapelle aux Saints" has just appeared.

I am happy to exhibit to-night one of the first casts of this famous skull, which I owe to the generosity of Professor M. Boule, of the Paris Museum, whose definition I give here verbatim.

"The general facies of the men of the Neanderthal type, as revealed by the most important discoveries made till now can be defined as follows: An enormous head supported by a thick, short trunk, the limbs short, muscular and very robust. The proportions of the limbs coincide with those of the present human races. The only trait of the general appearance which might be considered as pithecid would be the enormous size of the head in proportion to that of the body. In any case the *Homo Neanderthalensis* had absolutely, as well as relatively, the largest head known in the genus *Homo*."

The body was found in a grotto, lying on the back. The right arm was bent, the hand drawn towards the head, the left one was extended. The legs were drawn in, resting on the right. Above the head had been placed three or four fragments or ribs (os longs) and parts of the leg of a bovine ruminant, pointing that it had been laid there intentionally, perhaps as food for the defunct. Round this body were numerous flakes of quartz, flints, some of them, well worked, and all of the typical Mousterian form; fragments of ochre, broken bones, etc.

This grotto, according to the discoverers, men well versed in speleological research, should be looked upon not as a dwelling, but as a place of burial where many funeral feasts had been held.

This skeleton is that of an adult about fifty years old.

That of a youth, of about sixteen years of age, and of the same type, was found in the classical deposit of Le Moustier, and if I cite him, it is because it is said of the skeleton: "The posture is that of repose with the face turned to the right, the right arm is under the head, which is surrounded by flint flakes. Besides the skeleton were found, in addition to the flint implements of the Mousterian type some of the Acheulean, among them a splendidly-worked hand-wedge."

I shall now pass over the Cro-Magnon and other types of *Homo Sapiens* to come to the evidence afforded by the lithic industry of South Africa towards the Antiquity of Man.

Hitherto no human remain has been discovered that could go

to substantiate the presence in South Africa of a Middle Palaeolithic man belonging to the Neanderthal race.

But we have his tools in abundance. The shape of these tools, bouchers and scrapers is identical in spite of difference in the material, whether of flint or not; and the quartzitic implements of the Pyrénées, ascribed to the Middle Palaeolithic, cannot be distinguished from our quartzitic ones.

It is indeed difficult to accept the proposition that the amygdaloidal boucher has originated simultaneously as a well-finished tool in Europe, Africa, Asia, America. (It has not been met with in Australia).

But if we adopt the theory of intercourse through migration, its presence in lands so very far distant is to some extent explained.

These migrations are the more probable in that the climatic conditions of the Pleistocene before the advent of the great ice sheet, in Northern Europe, Asia, and America, could not have proved an obstacle.

Let us examine rapidly the evidence of these climatic conditions as a possible key to this intercourse. South Africa is one of the few parts of the world known to offer no indication of a Pleistocene glaciation.

Diligent search has been made for it by three geological surveys, Cape, Transvaal, Southern Rhodesia; all three have failed to find traces of its existence. Thus the Great Ice Age has affected the whole world, even the tropics in part, except South Africa, and perhaps part of Central Africa. It brought in its train conditions which have not failed to influence the animals, and also the man of the period, were it only by the considerable lowering of temperature. The large short-haired animals of the Chellean were gradually replaced by other large animals with thick shaggy hair suitable for an arctic or semi-arctic climate for at least a part of the year.

No such thing took place in Southern or Central Africa, where it can safely be assumed that the climatic conditions were the same as they are to-day, and differed little from those of the Chellean period in Europe, etc., as shown by the fauna of this period. Thus, the migrant early-palaeolithic man proceeding from the South would find, even in parts of England, identical climatic conditions and would meet there some, if not most of the animals he knew. And the same can be said of the Northern Chellean man if he proceeded South.

Later on, however, climatic changes began to oppose barriers to the continuation of this probably intermittent intercourse, if we accept the evidence of the lithic industry. During the Mousterian with its cold, moist climate the Chellean-Acheulean boucher is no longer manufactured, and if examples are found still in use, as in the case of the "Le Moustier" Middle Palaeolithic man, they appear to have been so highly valued as to have been interred with the body of the owner. The trimming of the Mousterian boucher is poor, as if intended to satisfy merely a passing want. That art, of any kind, industrial or other, seems to reach an apogee and then declines until it learns to develop into a new but different direction is a truism among Antiquarians, whether Prehistorians or not. In this case I deem the retrogression in the lithic industry to be due to the want of continuance in intercourse.

In South Africa, however, the execution remains not only what it was in the earlier days, as shewn by specimens found in the most ancient deposits, but the two industries are, and remain contemporaneous, that is to say the finished Chellean and unfinished Mousterian are found side by side, and, sometimes, also mingled with the Aurignacian type.

It is, of course, a matter of speculation if the evolution of the amygdaloidal boucher, with its concomitants, sharp spalls, scrapers,
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flakes, etc., emanated in the Palaearctic region or in South Africa. But the incredible number of these tools or weapons in South Africa, and north of it seems to imply that if it did not originate here, it was in use among a population much more dense in all likelihood than that of the middle Palaeolithic of Europe. As for the connection of a part of our lithic industry with the Aurignacian-Solutrian types of the Upper Palaeolithic, the evidence is no longer speculative. But this contemporaneity of the Chellean and Mousterian forms of bouchers point to the evolution of the boucher in South or Central Africa, and postulates therefore for its maker a greater antiquity than that of Le Moustier's Neanderthal Man.

If we now leave for a time the purely lithological side of the subject of the Antiquity of Man in South Africa, and we turn to the palaeontological as corroborative evidence, then disappointment awaits us, mostly because the large animals of the early Pleistocene, even of the Pliocene are still with us, and thus afford no help in the unravelling of the implements occasionally found with their remains.

But lately two extinct Antelopes, a *Connochaetes* and a *Cobus* (Gnu and Pallah-like creatures) have been discovered in the Free State with large flakes and other implements of palaeolithic type. With these were the remains of *Bubalus banni*, an extinct buffalo, the remains of which had previously been found in a probably later deposit together with an also extinct horse, etc.

* Fossil Antelopes, referred to Cobus, or allied to it occur in the Pliocene of India and Lower Pliocene of India.

More important, however, than these finds may possibly be that of several molar teeth of a *Mastodon* found in the Vaal River gravels, which if they were proved to be contemporaneous with the numerous palaeoliths occurring with them, would greatly prolong the antiquity of man. But it is quite possible, however, for this Mastodon to have lasted longer in South Africa or Africa than it did in Europe, where it does not go beyond the limit of the Pleistocene, whereas in North and South America it survived during the Pleistocene period. A corroboration of this hypothesis is to be found in the fact that these teeth are those of the *Bunolophon* group of the genus Mastodon in which the North African species are included.

Here, however, the lithic industry will again prove of avail. This is one of man's artefacts, a hand wedge, from Windsorton, found in numbers almost without end, in the very gravels I am speaking of. See how pitted the surface is, how worn the flaked edges. Yet, when broken in two not only does it show that the original texture of the rock or round boulder from which it was "knapped" was not naturally pitted, but you will notice round the periphery a conspicuous zone of weathering or disintegration amounting to nearly one fifth of the diameter. This is indeed an important piece of evidence: one that makes quite possible the acceptance of the contemporaneity of man with the Mastodon in South Africa, and thereby establishing for *Homo*, whether *canantherthalensis*, or *sapiens*, the greatest antiquity yet attributed to him.

And here evidence of this kind can be repeated *ad infinitum*, Here are large flakes and small flakes from East London made of the same material as that of the hand-wedges or amygdaloid bouchers from Windsorton. When broken in two they exhibit the same process of weathering. Unlike the Windsorton implements these have probably never been under water; the process of decomposition, if the term is permissible, is the same, even more intensified. It is with large flakes of this type that the two extinct Antelopes already alluded to were found.

No evidence of the great Antiquity of Man in South Africa could be more conclusive than that offered by this Man's Artefacts.
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