571.1 327 



IV 

 The Authenticity of Plateau Man 



THE antiquity of man and the locality of his birthplace are 

 problems of perennial interest, to which Sir John Evans' 

 address to the British Association has again directed general 

 attention. Sir John Evan's emphatic dismissal of all the evidence 

 yet advanced in favour of the existence of man earlier than the date 

 of the Palaeolithic gravels will no doubt arouse controversy, espe- 

 cially as in the time at his disposal he could give only a passing 

 reference to any single case, and not state the grounds of his dis- 

 trust. As I have during the past year given careful attention to the 

 asserted ' Eolithic ' implements found in the high plateau gravels 

 near Sevenoaks, with the result that I have had to abandon my 

 first belief in their human origin, it may be of interest if I state 

 the reasons for my change of opinion. 



The implements come from the deposits described by my late 

 friend Sir Joseph Prestwich in an important paper published by the 

 Geological Society in 1891. The chipped flints themselves were 

 described by Prestwich in a paper read to the Anthropological 

 Institute a year later. Further descriptions have been given by 

 their original discoverer, Mr Benjamin Harrison of Ightham, by 

 Professor T. Kupert Jones, Mr Lewis Abbott, and other writers. 

 Some geologists objected to the idea that the plateau flints had been 

 worked by man at the time of their first description ; but the drift 

 of expressed opinion has been lately rather in their favour. 



Early in 1896 I visited Ightham, and Mr Harrison kindly 

 showed me the great collection of chipped plateau flints which he 

 has formed during the past thirty or forty years with an inde- 

 fatigable perseverance that has excited the admiration of every 

 student of archaeology. As Mr Harrison's specimens lay side by 

 side there appeared a remarkable recurrence of the same external 

 form. This fact led me to accept the conclusion that the specimens 

 had been shaped by man, but a more searching examination 

 necessitated the abandonment of this opinion, as the flints them- 

 selves tell me quite a different story. 



Let us first examine the flints and see what traces they show of 

 the natural agencies that have acted upon them. 



The flints occur as a gravel on the surface of the chalk plateau, 



