SOUTH AFRICAN MAN-APES — DART 325 



clubs, such as were borne by Hercules. They flourished the jawbones 

 of prehistoric buffaloes, antelopes, zebras, and giraffes, just as Samp- 

 son is reputed to have wielded the jawbone of an ass to slay the 

 Philistines in thousands. They seized the back ends of antelope skulls 

 as handles and employed their double-pronged horns as picks. Such 

 were the axes, mattocks, and daggers used by these protomen. They 

 slashed their opponents with antelope hip bones and shoulder blades; 

 they struck them down with tibiae, thigh bones, and upper arm bones. 

 These long bones made excellent bludgeons until their heads were 

 smashed to smithereens by use or their shafts were broken. Then their 

 sword-sharp shattered ends were as formidable as stilettos. Thus, 

 armed with implements of bone and horn for striking and thrusting, 

 and tusks of giraffes, baboons, wild bears, hyenas, or saber-toothed 

 tigers for slashing down or slitting open — weapons torn from the 

 carcasses of beasts slain by themselves or other carnivores — they were 

 just as competent hunters as human beings — probably more compe- 

 tent, because they had fewer inhibitions. 



How do we know all this? From analyzing the gray bone breccia 

 in the basal layers of the bone breccia at Makapansgat Limeworks. 

 There, no stone tool, not even a pebble stone tool, has been found 

 hitherto. The Limeworks gray breccia is significant not so much 

 for the number and variety of man-apes found in it (only 19 frag- 

 ments had been found before 1955), but for the number and variety 

 of huge wild animals found alongside the man-apes ; and chiefly for 

 the relative numbers of their bones, teeth, and horns (i. e., their 

 osteodontokeratic — if we wish to say "bone, tooth, and horn" in one 

 word — remains). The Limeworks site has now become even more 

 significant: it is the only known site in the world which holds out 

 the prospect of tracing the transition from bone to stone. 



AUSTRALOPITHECINE BLUDGEON TECHNIQUE 



The fossil animals slain by the man-apes at Makapansgat were so 

 big that in 1925 I was misled into believing that only human beings 

 of advanced intelligence could have been responsible for such manlike 

 Imnting work as the bones revealed. The bones accompanying Aus- 

 tralopithecus africanus at Taungs have been those of little antelopes, 

 tortoises, hares, and rodents — small creatures, not great game of huge 

 bulk such as the kudu, giraffe, buffalo, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus. 

 These Makapansgat protomen, like Nimrod long after them, w^ere 

 mighty himters. 



They were also callous and brutal. The most shocking specimen 

 there was the fractured lower jaw of a 12-year-old son of a manlike 

 ape. The lad had been killed by a violent blow delivered with cal- 

 culated accuracy on the point of the chin either by a smashing fist 



