8 Annals of the Soutli African Museum. 



north-western part, from probably the beginning of the quaternary 

 period. 



Great, ahnost unsurmountable, therefore are the difficulties front- 

 ing the Antiquarian in South Africa : first, because geology and 

 palaeontology fail him in affording precise indications of an old 

 period from which deductions other than speculative might be 

 drawn ; secondly, because the Stone Age is not yet an age of the 

 past, or if so, it ended yesterday ; thirdly, because, with one 

 exception, there is no evidence of a Polished or Ground Stone 

 period having replaced the former and preceded a Bronze or Iron 

 Age as in the Palffiarctic Region. 



The only resource left to him is to turn to the comparative study 

 of the implements themselves, but he is soon led to conclude, on 

 lithological grounds, that these South African implements do not fit 

 in with the classification that answers to the requirements of, and 

 is founded upon, the evidence obtained in Europe. 



The latter classification is based on stratigraphical and palaeonto- 

 logical evidence, and it depends also on certain industries " which 

 unfortunately did not extend to South Africa. 



Classifications are made to be unmade when new discoveries occur. 

 But it is not possible to make the known South African finds fit 

 in with the classifications of Mortillet or of other authors. 



There is, moreover, a chain of evidence being slowly forged which 

 points to a resemblance between implements from the Old and 

 those of the New World. This similarity of form is so striking that 

 it makes the Antiquarian pause when he considei's the question of 

 the possible identity of the races of mankind that manufactured 

 these implements. Nor is he easy in his mind that this lithic 

 industry is not the result of causes due to the growing intellectual 

 power of man, affecting people in widely distant countries at the 

 same or different times. 



He has then to call the Anthropologist and the Ethnologist to his 

 aid. In spite of the fact that a community of races is not implied 

 by a like condition of culture, the Philologist may also be asked 

 to add his quota, although his great error is, and has always been, 

 to " treat a communicable character as an inborn gift." 



Thus reduced merely to a lithological comparison, the stud}' of the 

 South African implements might appear to prove barren of results. 

 But it is not so. The Chellean type is the Chellean type of the 

 Palgearctic and other regions. This is indubitable. But the types 



* The Magdalenian, connected with the reindeer, and perhaps late on with the 

 stag, is a case in point. 



