JOURNAL 
OF THE 
WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
Vou. 13 OcToBER 19, 1923 No. 17 
ANTHROPOLOGY.—Sione adzes of Egypt and Hawaii. Henry S. 
WasHINGTON, Geophysical Laboratory. 
Similarity or identity in form, design, or other characters of various 
objects, such as tools or weapons, made by primitive peoples who 
inhabit widely separated parts of the earth, is a matter of considerable 
interest in anthropology. These correspondences may be wholly 
independent of each other, because the human mind works much the 
same, especially as regards primitive needs, whatever may be the 
ethnic stock, so that similar circumstances or needs may give rise 
to similar solutions of the problem. Thus, closely similar tools or 
weapons may be developed among the most diverse and widely sepa- 
rated peoples, between whom no communication may be reasonably 
postulated. On the other hand, it has frequently happened that, 
in the course of trade or other inter-communication, one people has 
borrowed ideas from another, so that cases of resemblance in arti- 
facts may be indicative of such contacts in the past. The bearing 
of these considerations on problems of ethnic origins or migrations is 
obvious. 
In the present note attention is called to a somewhat striking case 
of similarity in rather primitive tools—adzes—used by two very 
different peoples, widely separated both in space and time. ‘The 
correspondence would seem to have been overlooked, but if it has 
already been noted its republication will do no harm, and the illus- 
trations of the objects, at least, may be of service to anthropologists. 
For the photographs I am indebted to Mr. J. Harper Snapp of the 
Geophysical Laboratory. 
The Egyptian adze, shown in Figs. 1-3, is one of several that I 
picked up in December, 1889, on the talus slope below the tombs 
at Beni Hassan, on the east bank of the Nile, about 167 miles south 
377 
