796 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



A still more conclusive proof is furnished by Professor Henry W. 

 Haynes, of Boston, who reports a number of wrought flints from Egypt, 

 among them several clearly characterized St. Acheul hatchets. 



In the February number (1869) of the " Materiaux pour I'Histoire 

 de I'Homme," M. Adrien Arcelin first made the announcement that the 

 grand Egyptian civilization, like all other civilizations, was preceded 

 by an age of stone. He had just collected in Upper Egypt several 

 chipped flints. Toward the close of the same year this discovery was 

 confirmed by Messrs. Lenormant and Hamy. All the specimens brought 

 home by these earliest explorers might be regarded as belonging to the 

 Robenhausen epoch, or age of polished stone — only one specimen, pre- 

 sented to the museum of St. Germain, came anywhere near the St. 

 Acheul type. 



After Arcelin's discovery, collections of dressed flints were multi- 

 plied in Egypt, though without throwing much light upon the question. 

 But Sir John Lubbock, in an essay illustrated with fine plates, gave 

 figures of three flint implements found at Luxor and at Abydos, which 

 are undoubtedly St. Acheul hatchets. 



Among the wrought flints brought from Egypt and exhibited by 

 Mr. Haynes are several which incontestably are of the quaternary 

 type. Among them we see scrapers and arrow-heads, the latter be- 

 longing to a type which in France occurs only in glacial formations. 

 The collection also embraces more ancient forms, preglacial forms, ref- 

 erable to the early portion of the Quaternary period, viz., St. Acheul 

 hatchets of flint. 



These St. Acheul hatchets come from two very distinct localities: 

 one lot is from the neighborhood of Luxor, in Upper Egypt, the other 

 from the environs of Cairo, in Lower Egypt. The flint used, as is 

 clearly proved by Delanoue, comes from the nummulitic formations. 

 These formations are found m situ in Upper Egjpt ; and the St. Acheul 

 hatchets of that region are as a rule heavier and better wrought, above 

 all, more completely wrought. In the environs of Cairo there are no 

 rocks in situ y and, as for flint, only rounded nodules are found. These 

 nodules have been wrought into the forms of implements. This is easily 

 seen, for all the St. Acheul hatchets of that locality still bear at their 

 base traces of the original rounded surface of the nodules. 



From these archaeological data, i. e., from the nature and the form 

 of the objects, we may conclude that the man of the earliest Quaternary 

 times lived in Egypt simultaneously with his existence in Europe, and 

 that in both of these regions his industrial development was about the 

 same, extremely primitive. 



And geological observation confirms these deductions. It was not 

 on the surface of plateaus that Mr. Haynes found these St. Acheul 

 implements. On the contrary, most of them, at least those from the 

 neighborhood of Luxor (fonning the greater number), were found in 

 the bottom of the ravines of Bab-el-Moluk. These ravines are cut deep 



