YOL. xviii. (i) THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS 7 



evidence that these are the work of primitive man seems to be 

 stronger than that derived from the EoUths. But if we assume 

 these types to be the work of man, we are forced to assume 

 his existence in these islands at an enormously distant period, 

 because he must have lived on the crown of the great dome 

 of chalk which once covered Kent and Sussex, and has 

 now disappeared under erosion of rivers like the Darenth and 

 Medway.' 



In another shape this theory of^ the extreme antiquity of 

 man in Eastern England has been raised by a remarkable 

 paper entitled " The Chronology of the Stone Age," by Dr W. 

 Allen Sturge,^ which I commend to your serious consideration. 

 To quote his conclusions, in his own words : — " Neolithic man 

 goes back to a period between two and three thousand years 

 ago, and it would seem that we have not even then reached 

 the beginning of the period. Drift man was flourishing from 

 a million years ago to about 700,000 years ago. Neither figure 

 is a limit ; the later figure is probably nearer a limit than the 

 earlier. Between the end of the Drift and the beginning of 

 the Neolithic, we have the great ' cave ' periods, which would' 

 thus seem to have occupied anything between 200,000 to 

 400,000 years. Behind Drift man are vast ages of which we 

 are now only beginning to get the first glimpses. But it now 

 seems evident that man was already on the earth in early 

 Pliocene times ; and we must not be surprised if proofs are 

 ultimately brought forward that the genus homo goes back 

 even further than that ; it has become almost a shibboleth, 

 that man first appeared in Pleistocene times ; but I affirm that 

 it is no more than a shibboleth. There is absolutely nothing 

 a priori for or against the statement ; it is entirely a question 

 of evidence." ^ 



It is not the time to criticize such far-reaching conclu- 

 sions. The question turns on the fact whether this type of 

 implement is really the work of man, or the result of the 

 forces of Nature working upon the raw material. This is a 

 problem for the Petrologist. It is remarkable that, so far as 

 I am aware, the problems connected with the cleavage of flint 



1. R. R. Marett, Anthropology (igiz) pp. 41, et seqq. 



2. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 0/ East Anglia, vol. i., part i., (1911) pp. 43, «' segi}. 

 3; Ibid p. 104, et seq. 



