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AGE OF SURFACE FLINT IMPLEMENTS OF EGYPT AND SOMALILAND. 55D 
belonging to the true high Nile age, and not in the face of a ravine like Pitt- 
Rivers’. They are in my collection here. 
“T by no means wish to attack your summing up. But, for my own part, 
the evidence of historic age for the darkened flints seems to me far weaker 
than the evidence of undarkened flints in every case in which I can connect 
them with an historic time. 
“You will be glad to hear I have cleared many of the kings’ tombs of the 
Ist Dynasty, and have many flint fragments and some whole knives absolutely 
dated to that age, so I hope you will come and see them here [University 
College] in July.” 
It will be observed that these authorities are not all agreed upon the age 
of the surface flint implements of Paleolithic form found in Egypt and North 
Africa. Many of them do regard the flints as belonging to the Paleolithic 
Period, and I would venture here to state some of the reasons that make it 
still difficult for me to accept this great age for the surface implements from 
the plateaux and the galleries of Egypt and of Somaliland. 
In his paper to the Royal Society, quoted above, Sir John Evans 
remarked that recent discoveries by M. Boule in Algeria “go a long way 
towards settling the question” and strengthening his position “with regard 
to the truly Palzolithic character of the implements found in other parts of ” 
Africa ; increasing “this probability” elsewhere (Egypt Expl. Fund Annual 
Report, 1899-1900, p. 29) writes Sir John Evans, “to the verge of certainty.” 
M. Marcelin Boule has very kindly sent me a copy of his memoir, of which Sir 
John Evans gives (necessarily) but a short abstract in his paper to the Royal 
Society. In Lac Karar implements of rude form have been found in asso- 
ciation with bones of elephant, horse, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, and other 
animals supposed to have lived in the region in Quaternary times. Assuming 
that these rude implements are truly of the Paleolithic Age of Europe as 
fixed by their association with bones of a contemporaneous fauna, surely this 
fact can in no greater degree support the view that implements of Paleolithic 
form found on the surface of the Egyptian desert or Somaliland plateau, 
or in 8. Africa, unassociated with animal remains and unrelated to any 
dateable strata, are also of that age, any more than our knowledge of imple- 
ments of true Paleolithic Age in the Valley of the Somme (when N. Africa 
and Europe were united) can. 
Without presuming to question the accuracy of M. Boule’s determination 
of the age of the implements and of the species to which belong the 
animal remains in this curious Algerian pond, one cannot but be struck 
with its peculiar and, in regard to geological deposition, its abnormal 
physical features. Its waters come from a subterranean source, and 
have not apparently been supplemented by any surface inflow which 
could have conveyed into the depression either the bones or the filints, 
which now lie “pell-mell” in the sand and gravel of the old bed of 
a dried-up portion of its bottom. The elephant remains, according to 
M. Boule, do not belong to an African species, but to one more 
nearly related to the Quaternary or even the Pliocene elephants of 
Europe. “Cela suffit pour etablir,’ adds M. Boule, “Tantiquite de 
notre gisement prehistorique.” The rhinoceros remains are ascribed to 
hk. simus, “actually living in the interior of Africa ;” the “horse” teeth 
belong to a species of zebra, ‘‘ very near, if not identical with, the still living 
Equus burchelli ;” the hippopotamus remains, M. Boule regards as those of the 
present African species, though perhaps of a larger race ; the pig, the deer, 
the gnu, and the sheep are referred to species also still living ; the species 
to which the Bubalus and the Alcelaphus bones belong it has been impos- 
sible to determine with certainty. “ Assuredly,” adds M. Boule, “ this list 
