﻿78 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 78 



is an ancient basin filled with remarkably pure limestone. This lime- 

 stone in turn, through water action, had become honeycombed with 

 crevices and caves, and in these caves lived, and especially went 

 to die, ancient baboons and also the recently found anthropoid ape 

 the existence of which, so far south, has never been suspected. These 

 remains became covered with sand blown in from the Kalahari Desert. 

 This sand was in turn permeated with water carrying lime in solu- 

 tion, forming hard rock in which the remains of the ancient creatures 

 are enclosed ; and here they appear in the stone as this is blasted. 

 This site is by no means exhausted, at least as far as the smaller 

 apes are concerned. But to get to the fossils, a man must climb with 

 the help of a rope a 6o-foot vertical cliff, and thrusting his foot into 

 crevices, must hammer off piece after piece of the hard rock which 

 contains the remains. In this manner Dr. Hrdlicka found five baboon 

 skulls, only one of which however could be preserved. Other fossils 

 besides those of baboons have been found in this quarry — turtles, 

 crabs, large eggs and bones. 



Dr. Hrdlicka examined the large fossil skull at Johannesburg Uni- 

 versity where it is deposited in Professor Dart's laboratory.'' It be- 

 longs to a species of anthropoid ape of about the size of a chimpanzee 

 and evidently related to this form, though there are certain differ- 

 ences, especially in the brain. These differences suggest that this 

 ape may possibly have been somewhat superior to the chimpanzee 

 and nearer to the human. But it is not necessarily a form that stood 

 in the direct line of the human phylum. 



In " paleoliths," South Africa is rich. They may be found in favor- 

 able spots along the sea shore ; in the gravels, banks, and vicinity of 

 rivers ; and they are common in caves. They present forms rather 

 more like those of India than those of old western Europe ; but here 

 and there, are also close resemblances to the earlier or later European 

 types. The question of the antiquity of these implements has not yet 

 been satisfactorily worked out as a great many are found on the 

 surface and are plainly recent ; others may be ancient. That not all 

 the sites where such implements occur and have hitherto been re- 

 garded as ancient, are of that nature, was seen along the Zambesi 



^ Those in South Africa whose aid in Dr. HrcUicka's work is hereby specially 

 and thankfully acknowledged are : Professor Raymond A. Dart and many 

 of his colleagues at the Johannesburg University; the officials of the Broken 

 Hill Development Company, Northern Rhodesia ; those of tlie Northern Lime 

 Company, Bechuanaland ; Mr. Neville Jones of the London Mission, near 

 Bulawayo ; Professor M. R. Drennan at the Cape Town University ; and Mr. 

 Dewitt C. Poole, U. S. Consul General at Cape Town. 



