571.1 32 
=F 
IV 
The Authenticity of Plateau Man 
HE antiquity of man and the locality of his birthplace are 
problems of perennial interest, to which Sir John Evans’ 
address to the British Association has again directed general 
attention. Sir John Evan’s emphatic dismissal of all the evidence 
yet advanced in favour of the existence of man earlier than the date 
of the Palaeolithic gravels will no doubt arouse controversy, espe- 
cially as in the time at his disposal he could give only a passing 
reference to any single case, and not state the grounds of his dis- 
trust. As I have during the past year given careful attention to the 
asserted ‘ Eolithic’ implements found in the high plateau gravels 
near Sevenoaks, with the result that I have had to abandon my 
first belief in their human origin, it may be of interest if I state 
the reasons for my change of opinion. 
The implements come from the deposits described by my late 
friend Sir Joseph Prestwich in an important paper published by the 
Geological Society in 1891. The chipped flints themselves were 
described by Prestwich in a paper read to the Anthropological 
Institute a year later. Further descriptions have been given by 
their original discoverer, Mr Benjamin Harrison of Ightham, by 
Professor T. Rupert Jones, Mr Lewis Abbott, and other writers. 
Some geologists objected to the idea that the plateau flints had been 
worked by man at the time of their first description; but the drift 
of expressed opinion has been lately rather in their favour. 
Early in 1896 I visited Ightham, and Mr Harrison kindly 
showed me the great collection of chipped plateau flints which he 
has formed during the past thirty or forty years with an inde- 
fatigable perseverance that has excited the admiration of every 
student of archaeology. As Mr Harrison’s specimens lay side by 
side there appeared a remarkable recurrence of the same external 
form. This fact led me to accept the conclusion that the specimens 
had been shaped by man, but a more searching examination 
necessitated the abandonment of this opinion, as the flints them- 
selves tell me quite a different story. 
Let us first examine the flints and see what traces they show of 
the natural agencies that have acted upon them. 
The flints occur as a gravel on the surface of the chalk plateau, 
