A  _ 
AGE OF SURFACE FLINT IMPLEMENTS OF EGYPT AND SOMALILAND. 49 
no reason for referring them to a higher antiquity; that many of the so-called 
‘palxolithic’ finds by Petrie and Quibell on the desert surface are, just like 
the Abu Sharhein flints, not to be distinguished from many of those in this 
Museum found by Seton-Karr on the surface of the Theban plateau, and in 
the Wady el Sheikh mines; and that as many of the plateau implements 
have been found in close association with nodules and the flakes struck from 
them, it seems impossible to believe that these could remain (even in a single 
instance) undisturbed from the Paleolithic Age of Europe to the present time, 
when the forest under which they were made, and the forest soil on which 
they reposed, have been entirely carried away. This reasoning applied to 
the Somaliland implements shows that they must be of an age much more 
recent than palzolithic, and probably even comparatively recent. 
“The conclusions it seems to me legitimate to draw from a study of 
the collection here described, are that rude and Paleolithic forms, amount 
and depth of patina, and surface condition are characters which cannot be 
depended on to fix the date of stone implements when there is no possibility 
of determining the geological age of the strata whence they have come, and in 
the absence of associated faunistic remains. Also, that the similarity, and even 
identity, of form in the stone implements of two widely separated localities 
are of themselves insufficient evidence of contact between the races who made 
them. And, likewise, that none of the surface ‘ Paleolithic’ implements from 
Egypt and Somaliland have yet been clearly proved to belong to that period, 
while the probability is that the bulk of them are of much later date.” 
On the 15th March, 1900, Mr. Charles H. Read, Keeper of Ethnology 
in the British Museum, Secretary of the Society of Antiquaries, in exhibiting 
before the Society on that day a number of the flint implements from Egypt, 
collected by Mr. H. W. Seton-Karr (Proc. Soc. Antig., Lond., XVIIL., p. 114) 
made the following remarks:—‘“ . . . from the occurrence of great 
quantities of such relics in all stages of manufacture it has been assumed, with 
good reason, that the flint was worked and the implements made” where 
found. ‘The importance of the discovery as bearing on the antiquity of 
certain types of implements in Egypt and the length of time, only a few 
thousand years, necessary to produce a deep patination has been pointed out 
in detail by Mr. H. O. Forbes in the Bulletin of the Liverpool Museums (vol. ii., 
p. 77f, 1899-1900), and there a full statement of the evidence will be found. 
The types of implements range from something nearly approaching to that 
ascribed to Paleolithic times down to the carefully chipped flints which are 
assigned to the XIIth Dynasty. But it is assumed by Mr. Forbes, and his 
arguments seem sound, that the whole of the objects found by Mr. Seton-Karr 
are of one period, and that naturally the latest. If this be so, and -there seems 
no reason to doubt it, deep discolouration from exposure to the air can no 
longer be accepted as a proof of high antiquity for flint implements in Eqypt.* 
There are other points brought forward by Mr. Forbes, which are of great 
interest in the study of the question of Paleolithic man in Africa, and Fellows 
are referred to the Liverpool Bulletin, which is fully illustrated with figures of 
the implements for these as well as for the arguments supporting the state- 
ments here brought forward.” 
In his Presidential address to the Anthropological Institute of Great 
Britain on the 30th January, 1900 (published in January, 1901) the same 
writer—«propos of the occurrence in the Knysna caves in South Africa of “very 
rude stone implements ” which were certainly “the productions of previous 
generations of existing natives”—remarked :—“I have a strong impression 


* The italics are the present writer’s. 
