TOOLS MAKYTH MAN—OAKLEY 439 
Gorge in northern Tanganyika. The associated fauna indicates that 
Bed I of Oldoway is of early Middle Pleistocene age. The typical 
Oldowan industry found in this bed consists of pebbles or other lumps 
of rock flaked by percussion to form crude chopping tools “varying in 
size from the dimensions of a ping-pong ball to that of a croquet ball.” 
The chopping edges were made by removing flakes in two directions 
along one side of the pebble or lump, so that the intersecting flake scars 
formed a jagged cutting edge. The fact that occasionally these pebble 
choppers foreshadow bifacial hand axes, and the fact that hand axes 
appear and begin to replace pebble tools in Bed II, are indications 
that the Abbevillian-Acheulian sequence of cultures evolved from the 
Oldowan. The discovery of a few apparently Oldowan-type pebbles 
in the Laetolil Beds of Tanganyika and in the Kanam Beds of Kenya 
suggested that the beginnings of Oldowan culture were to be sought in 
the Lower Pleistocene (Villafranchian) beds of Africa, but until quite 
recently there has been an element of uncertainty about all pebble tools 
from Villafranchian deposits. 
Unquestionable stone industries closely comparable with the Oldo- 
wan have now been found in North Africa and in South Africa in 
fossil-bearing deposits of Late Villafranchian age. The northern oc- 
currence was discovered by Prof. C. Arambourg in lake-margin de- 
posits at Ain Hanech in Algeria, and consisted of quantities of pebbles 
or stone lumps flaked in several directions to form subangular stone 
balls that would have served equally well as missile stones or multi- 
edged pounders. A few hand axes of Abbevillian type are reported as 
coming from an immediately overlying layer. These Algerian indus- 
tries are clearly the homotaxial equivalents of those in Beds I and II 
at Olduvai. 
The discovery in March 1958 of pebble tools of “advanced Kafuan” 
(I would now say “Early Oldowan”) type in the calcified surface of 
the Basal Older Gravels in the 200-foot terrace of the Vaal Valley in 
South Africa was the first positive indication that toolmakers existed 
in South Africa as early as the dry phase which terminated the First 
(or Villafranchian) Pluvial period. The discovery raised a most in- 
triguing problem, because cave deposits that accumulated during this 
dry Late Villafranchian stage at Taung in Bechuanaland and at 
Sterkfontein and Makapan in the Transvaal had yielded remains of 
the subhuman Australopithecus. Was it possible that the pebble tools 
had been made by that creature? Analyzing the evidence available 
in 1954 I argued that it was possible, but I thought unlikely for two 
reasons. In the first place, although the Australopithecines walked 
upright on two legs and qualified structurally to be regarded as Ho- 
minidae, rather than as true apes or Pongidae, nevertheless in abso- 
lute size their brains were on an average no larger than those of apes. 
