PALEOLITHIC RACES 35 1 



flung from his hand preserves no record of its flight ; but between 

 these two lie many intermediate stages which might puzzle the 

 wisest to decide whether the}'' have been formed by accident or 

 intent. Nature graduates nicely into art, and we have no talisman 

 at present to tell us where one ends and the other begins. 



Finally there is nothing in the nature of this hypothetical 

 evolution to inform us whether it was rapid or spread over a 

 long period of time. 



Hence it happens that anthropologists are divided into two 

 opposing, almost hostile, camps. 



We may usefully supplement our account of the actual 

 evidence by a brief review of the arguments which have been 

 used on each side. 



It may be remarked at the outset that those who advocate 

 the human origin of many "eolithic" forms too often seem to 

 confuse the possibility with the probability that a particular 

 stone may have been used by man. For instance, the Andaman 

 islanders obtain sharply pointed fragments of flint by heating 

 the stone in a fire and then plunging it into water ; they make 

 use of these fragments for drilling holes in bits of shell which 

 then serve as a sort of beads ; the drills are soon blunted by use, 

 and are then thrown on to the kitchen midden, where along with 

 other refuse they accumulate in thousands. 1 This fact is cited 

 as evidence of the human workmanship of the flints of Thenay. 2 



But flints of the Andaman islanders carry very little proof of 

 their origin in themselves ; our knowledge of them is founded 

 first on direct observation of the process by which they were 

 made, and next on their association with other signs of human 

 occupation in the rubbish heaps of the village. If they occurred 

 without this collateral evidence, strewn through a mass of in- 

 organicalry-shaped flints, we should in all probability be unable 

 to establish their true nature. But it is a curious inversion 

 of reasoning which would argue that since certain fragments of 

 stone, devoid of any sign by which they could be recognised 

 as of human workmanship, have nevertheless been made and 

 used by man, therefore certain other fragments, equally devoid, 

 in the opinion of their opponents, of such signs, must also have 

 been used by man. 



1 Man, "On the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands," Joum. 

 AntJirop. Inst., vol. vii. p. 244. 



2 Engerrand, "Six Aeons de Prehistoire," Bruxelles, 1905, p. 50. 



