1897] THE AUTHENTICITY OF PLATEAU MAN 331 



staining. The whole of the original surface is scratched, and the 

 scratches sometimes extend over the edges and also cut across the 

 surfaces left by the chips previously referred to. A dark brown, in 

 parts fibrous, incrustation of silex thickly covers the original surface 

 of this specimen. This was succeeded, after the glacial scratching, 

 by a deposit of white silex filling up the hollows and scratches ; the 

 whole has been subsequently smoothed down and polished by blown 

 sand. This specimen was dug from one of the pits in the Plateau 

 gravel in 1890". 



These four specimens illustrate the main process which the flints 

 have undergone. They show that the drippings were not all formed 

 at one period, a fact which it seems to me is quite inconsistent with 

 the theory that they were artificially shaped by man. The objection 

 seems especially convincing as, according to the advocates of that 

 theory, all the shaping must have been done before the flints were 

 imbedded in the gravel in which they now occur. If the flints were 

 worked, used, and then thrown down again, we should expect to find 

 them widely scattered over the surface as is the case with palaeo- 

 lithic and neolithic implements. What possible agency could have 

 picked them all off the surface and collected them together into this 

 gravel bed ? Further, we are told that the shaping and working of 

 the flints by man " had taken place before the flint entered into the 

 remarkable deposit which so altered the surface of the stone, and 

 changed its colour into that characteristic dark-brown." * So accord- 

 ing to the theory, the flints were first chipped into shape, and then 

 carried into the plateau gravel. They were coloured subsequently, 

 and the deposition of the siliceous encrustations, the glacial scratching, 

 and the sand polishing all took place while the flints were in the 

 gravel in which they now lie. 



Another objection to the human working of these flints is the 

 uselessness of the shapes into which they have been made. Flints 

 often break naturally into a triangular form, and as the chipping 

 has mainly acted on thin edges, abundant examples of pointed forms 

 are found. Some of these resemble in outline the implements of 

 later dates, but all the details of the flaking are different. Less 

 importance is apparently placed on these triangular flints than on 

 those with concave edges, which are supposed to have been used 

 as flesh-scrapers. Some of the South Sea Islanders have, it is true, 

 been observed scraping their limbs with stones ; but we can hardly 

 suppose that such vast numbers of these concave flints would have 

 been required by the plateau folk for this purpose, especially as they 

 would never wear out, and one would last for an indefinite time. 



The chipping in some cases has not only been useless, but has 

 even spoilt stones that might otherwise have been useful. Some of 



1 Nat. Set., April 1894, p. 259. 



