96 Annals of the South African Musenm. 



or in the neighbourhood of " vleis," in the South- Western part of 

 Cape Colony. Mr. J. P. Johnson has figured some " highly charac- 

 teristic crescents," as he terms them, in what he calls the river 

 deposits of Eiverton Island, on the Vaal River. 



It is not at all unlikely, with the method of gum-cement which we 

 now know obtained, that these semi-crescent-shaped tools with one 

 cutting edge or two were used here also for barbing arrows or per- 

 haps harpoons. No evidence that they were used in that manner 

 has so far been obtained, it is true, either here or in Europe, but that 

 such a form of attachment existed here is proved by the arrows in 

 PI. XVIII., Pig. 142. 



That the majority of our pygmies are borers or drills, or parers 

 of ostrich egg-shell discs is patent in Algeria and in the Soudan,* 

 whence many specimens are exact duplicates of ours, the " pygmies" 

 served there the same purposes, and were manufactured in all likeli- 

 hood by the same race of men. 



These pygmies of Europe are considered by some to belong to the 

 initial period of the Neolithic Age. With us they have lasted to 

 this day, and are most usually connected with the ! kwes, grooved 

 mortars, bone tools, pottery, &c. 



In the Aurignacian period of Europe, however, we begin to find 

 chips and nuclei which are also singularly like South African ones ; 

 the published figures! of the finds in the stations of Hundesteig, 

 Krems, Sovithern Austria, correspond altogether with those of our 

 Figs. 139 and 145, and many with those of Fig. 140. 



* Cf. Debruge, Les burins et les silex de forme geometrique de I'Atlas 

 "L'homme prehistorique," 1905. 



"Les stations sahariennes ont fourni a M. Foureau de nombreux fragments 

 d'oeufs d'autruche les uns tres delicatement graves, les autres tallies en forme 

 de petites rondelles perforees a leur centre. Pour travailler ces coquilles d'oeuf, 

 I'ouvrier eut frequemment brise son oeuvre avant de I'avoir achevee, et les petits 

 silex a dos abattu repondaient fort bien a cet usage." Verneaux, in Foureau's 

 Mission Saharienne, pp. 1109-1110. 



t Hoerns, " Der diluviale Mensch.," p. 119, Fig. 44. 



