f > 



28 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



the discoveries in the Brixham cave, and the recent researches in the gravel- 

 pits at Abbeville and Amiens, suddenly arrived, I was agreeably surprised 

 at seeing the opinion of the very high antiquity of the rude stone implements 

 found there, fully corroborated by the authority of eminent French and 

 English naturalists and antiquaries; and I derived equally great satisfaction 

 from the unanimous declaration 6f all the different writers in this case, that 

 the flint pieces from the gravel and the caves are much unlike the common 

 implements of the stone-age in France and England ; and that they evidently 

 are forming quite a peculiar class. Some remarks of Mr. Evans, in his 

 paper communicated to the Society of Antiquaries of London " On the 

 Occurrence of Flint Instruments in undisturbed Beds of Gravel, both on the 

 Continent and in England," where he speaks about the pointed and oval, or 

 almond-shaped implements of flint, " all indisputably worked by the hand 

 of man, and not indebted for their shape to any natural configuration or 

 peculiar fracture of the flint," attracted, in the highest degree, my attention. 

 "They present," he says, " no analogy in form to the well-known imple- 

 ments of the so-called Celtic or stone period, which, moreover, have for the 

 most part some portion, if not the whole, of their surface ground or polished, 

 and are frequently made from other stones than flint. Those from the drift 

 are, on the contrary, never ground, and are exclusively of flint. They have, 

 indeed, every appearance of having been fabricated by another race of men, 

 who, from the fact that the Celtic stone weapons have been found in the 

 superficial soil, above the drift containing these ruder weapons, as well as 

 from other considerations, must have inhabited this region of the globe at a 

 period anterior to its so-called Celtic, occupation." 



It certainly is a very remarkable coincidence, that Mr. Evans here, without 

 any connection with me, and without knowing my newly-started theories 

 about the subdivisions of the different ages, is using exactly the same argu- 

 ments, and nearly the same words, with which I, two years ago, tried to add 

 a subdivision of the stone-age to my other proposed divisions of the bronze 

 and the iron ages. 



The flint implements of the drift and the bone-caves are no longer left 

 " without any standard of comparison." We have plenty of such objects, 

 hundreds, and even thousands, found in the said artificial mounds, in lakes, 

 bogs, and on the sea-shores of Denmark, in the closest connection with 

 antiquities of such a kind, that no man, not even the most prejudiced, 

 should venture to ascribe the origin of them to a natural cause, to " motion 

 in water." 



The great quantity of flint implements found in the drift in the valley of 

 the Somme in France more than a thousand in the last ten years, in an 

 area of fifteen miles in length has been used as an argument against their 

 being implements at all. But it must be borne in mind, that the aborigines, 

 as naturally was to be expected, for the sake of fishing, lived near the sea- 

 shore, the rivers, and lakes, and that they on the very spots where they wan- 

 dered about, undoubtedly, very often through many centuries, manufactured 

 their rude implements of flint, a material which resists the influence of 

 time. We, therefore, have the right beforehand of supposing a great num- 

 ber of stone implements to be found in such localities, and the truth of this 

 supposition has also been completely confirmed by many most curious facts, 

 which have been observed both in Europe and in America. 



For instance, in the neighborhood, of Pittsburg, Penn., on the borders 

 of the river Delaware, such a number of stone implements were found, 



