20 On some Palaeolithic Implements found in Somaliland. 



Before returning to Somaliland, Mr. Seton-Karr visited my collec- 

 tions, and studied the various forms of implements found in the 

 river-gravels and Pleistocene deposits in different parts of the world, 

 so as to become familiar with their leading features ; and on revisiting 

 Somaliland during the past winter, he was fortunate enough to meet 

 with a large number of specimens in form absolutely identical with 

 some from the valley of the Somme and other places which he had 

 seen in my collection. 



Of this identity in form there can be no doubt, and though at 

 present no fossil mammalian or other remains have been found with 

 the implements, we need not hesitate in claiming them as palaeolithic. 

 They seem to be scattered all over the country, and to have been 

 washed out of sandy or loamy deposits by the action of rain, or, in 

 some instances, to have been laid bare by the wind. They appear 

 also to occur most frequently in the neighbourhood of existing water- 

 courses, which is at all events suggestive of the beds in which they 

 occur having been in some manner the result of river-action. It 

 is, however, at present premature to enlarge on the circumstances of 

 their discovery. Their great interest consists in the identity of their 

 forms with those of the implements found in the Pleistocene deposits 

 of North Western Europe and elsewhere. Any one comparing the 

 implements from such widely separated localities, the one with the 

 other, must feel that if they have not been actually made by the same 

 race of men, there must have been some contact of the closest kind 

 between the races who manufactured implements of such identical 

 forms. Those from Somaliland occur in both flint (much whitened 

 and decomposed by exposure) and in quartzite, but the implements 

 made from the two materials are almost indistinguishable in form. 

 Those of lanceolate shape are most abundant, but the usual ovate and 

 other forms are present in considerable numbers. 



Turning westward from Somaliland we meet with flint implements 

 of the same character found by Professor Flinders Petrie afc a height 

 of many hundred feet above the valley of the Nile. A few have 

 been discovered in Northern Africa, they recur in the valley of the 

 Manzanares in Spain, in some districts in Central Italy, and abound 

 in the river-valleys of France and England. Turning eastward we 

 encounter implements of analogous forms, one found by M. Chantre 

 in the valley of the Euphrates, and many made % of quartzite in the 

 laterite deposits of India ; while in Southern Africa almost similar 

 types occur, though their age is somewhat uncertain. 



That the cradle of the human family must have been situated in 

 some part of the world where the climate was genial, and the means 

 of subsistence readily obtained, seems almost self-evident ; and that 

 these discoveries in Somaliland may serve to elucidate the course by 

 which human civilisation, such as it was, if not indeed the human 



