222 PROCEEDINGS COTTESWOLD CLUB 1906 
migration theory; but, while freely admitting them, I do 
not feel quite satisfied with the explanation given by Sir 
John Evans and Mr Read. I am disposed to think that 
M. de Pierpoint’s remark previously quoted to the effect 
that the “ pygmies” are the work, not of a conquering 
race, but of a retreating people on the verge of extinction, 
points to the true solution of the problem. I suspect 
that the “pygmy” makers were a subject population 
dependent on the more aggressive, combatant people who 
used the ordinary Neolithic implements. Such dependent 
communities, with women specially trained in the art of 
making delicate implements, as a domestic industry, might 
not be universally distributed throughout the Neolithic 
world, although existing in many widely separated places. 
The big and the little implements would be found together 
or in separate stations according as the conquering race 
and the dependent race were intermixed or lived in distinct 
settlements. In India at the present day, as a speaker 
pointed out at the meeting, subject races constantly 
are required to occupy distinct sections of a village, or ~ 
even separate villages. Conquering Neolithic immi- 
grants, who had not brought the dependent race with 
them, or had not found them in possession, would have: 
no “pygmy” implements in the settlements, but, wherever 
the dependents were settled, those implements would be 
found, and the miniature tools, produced in enormous 
quantities, would have formed a very valuable addition to 
the mechanical resources of the community as a whole. 
This hypothesis seems to me to supply a reasonable 
explanation of the erratic distribution of the “ pygmy” 
implements in the world, and more especially in the valley 
of the Meuse. 
We must now briefly consider the uses to which stone 
implements ranging in length from three-sixteenths of an 
inch to an inch could be put. The first fact to remember 
