EARLY MAN 



in size from a split pea up to a five-shilling piece, or even larger, which chips 

 are apparently due not to human agency, but to accidental violence. The 

 surface of these chips in no w^ay resembles that of the implements themselves, 

 but has undergone a change from the natural blackness of the newly-chipped 

 flint to a porcelainous white, quite irrespective of the patina which the 

 humanly-worked surfaces of the flint may have taken on. This chipping is 

 a very remarkable and very instructive phenomenon. It means that at some 

 time in the past history of these flints, after they had received their patination, 

 they were subjected to some exceedingly rough usage, not by man but by 

 nature ; a knocking about greater than that to which the stones of any other 

 implementiferous gravels have been subjected ; for this curious chipping is 

 practically confined to Warren Hill. Then these newly-chipped surfaces 

 have undergone a fresh patination, but probably not in the gravels in which 

 they are now found. In the first place the Warren Hill gravels are very 

 sandy — so much so that they are often referred to as sand pits rather than 

 gravel pits. They are one of the loosest and softest gravels that the writer is 

 acquainted with ; the least likely of any therefore to show signs on the stones 

 of extensive knocking about, in their course down to the gravels. The 

 chipping would thus seem to be due to some previous journey under flood 

 conditions, the last journey into their present position being a later episode in 

 their history. And this view is borne out by the fact that implements with 

 slight patination, which are generally of finer make, show less signs of rolling 

 than those of more marked patination ; and have none of the chipping round 

 the edge. They have in fact been fabricated after the tumultuous floods 

 which chipped the older implements, and have therefore been subjected only 

 to the milder diluvial conditions which gave rise to the present sandy gravels. 

 But further, there is good reason for believing, contrary to the general 

 view, that flints do not, in most cases at any rate, undergo staining in gravels. 

 At Warren Hill the evidence already adduced is in favour of this view ; 

 many of the implements being patinated on one side only, and the accidental 

 chips being white rather than the colour of the original patina. The most 

 cursory examination of palaeolithic gravels will show that in them the true 

 palaeolithic patinations are rare amongst the stones composing the gravels. 

 These true palaeolithic patinations are of various kinds ; but all of them are 

 quite different from the prevailing patination of the gravels. This does not 

 refer to humanly-worked stones only, but to all the flints in the gravels of 

 true Palaeolithic Age, for the patinas on the humanly-worked stones do not 

 differ from those on the accidentally split or chipped surfaces of the un- 

 worked stones of the same period. Yet, the point bears repetition that flints 

 with palaeolithic patinations, whether human or non-human, in most gravels 

 are in a very small minority, not more perhaps than one in a thousand. 

 How then can they have got their staining in, at any rate, the present 

 gravels? Moreover, if the gravels be carefully examined it will be seen that 

 there are flints in them which have evidently been broken in their course 

 down into the gravel ; and the broken surfaces of these flints are quite 

 black — wholly unpatinated. Therefore, to go back to the accidental 

 chippings on many of the Warren Hill ovates with their porcelainous white 

 patination, there is every reason to believe that these chippings date, not 

 from the last diluvial action to which they have been exposed, but to some 

 I 241 31 



