242 



KNOWLEDGE. 



[NOVEMBEB 1, 1900. 



Abusi, beyond Anamabo, and other places furtber 

 east, specimens of a lightish slaty hue are common. 

 Captain Cameron, whose fine collection is described 

 elsewhere, brought home one that felt and looked like 

 a soapstone coloured cafc-au-lait." 



He suggests that Asim was a great centre of stone 

 manufacture, evidently because he observed a number 

 of curiously marked boulders of greenstone, whinstone, 

 ironstone, or diorite. He describes them as having 

 their upper surfaces " scored and striped with leaf- 

 shaped grooves, some of them three feet long by three 

 inches wide and two deep.' He thought it probable 

 that chippings of the same rock were here ground to 

 the required size and shape. Of course those geologists 

 who know little of stone implerhents, Australian stone 

 totems, etc., would naturally at once say on hearing of 

 these grooves, that they had .been caused in boulder 

 drift. But we must remember that often the same 

 result may be produced in two or more different ways, 

 and that therefore Burton may be right. 



In connection with this, it would be interesting to 

 investigate the large boulder of granite, called Olumo, 

 on the summit of a hill near Abeokuta in the Yoruba 

 country, Lagos ; for this boulder is sacred to Oro, and 

 no one may ascend it. Oro means fierceness or tempest , 

 it is also a society, probably manipulated by the Ogboni 

 tribal society in the Yoruba districts. The word is 

 specially applied to the spirit whose voice is heai'd, the 

 voice being produced, as elsewhere in Africa, Australia,, 

 and America, by the bull-roarer, or thin strip of wood, 

 some two and a half inches broad, and a foot long, 

 tapering at both ends, and fastened to a stick by a 

 long string. But since in Australia a similar form has 

 been found in stone as well as in wood, pierced by a 

 hole at one end, and as the latter (of wood) are used 

 as bull-roarers, the resemblance between Australian 

 totems {churinija in the Central Australian dialect) 

 and sacred stones in West Africa is striking, and may 

 lead to some further discovery if carefully followed up 

 near Abeokuta. Indeed, as the Olumo stone is sacrei 

 to Oro (the voice caused by the bull-roarer), it is pos- 

 sible that stones shaped like bull-roarers may be found 

 to be amongst the secrets kept by the Oro Society, who 

 certainly keep their wooden bull-roarers carefidly out 

 of sight of women and the profane. The Olumo" may 

 be the rock from which were cut stone bull-roarers, as 

 well as working implements. An examination of its 

 surface would help to decide the 'prus and cons of this 

 suggestion. 



In " Notes on Y'oruba and the Colony and Protecto- 

 rate of Lagos," a paper read before the Royal Geo- 

 graphical Society by Sir Alfred Moloney, k.c.m.g., there 

 is the following: — "Nor is Y^oruba" excluded from 

 the widespread belief that stone implements are thunder- 

 bolts. Some rude celts, shaped as axes and chisels, 

 I have collected; they are called ara* oko. The second 

 great Orisa, or subject of worship, intermediate between 

 man and god (olorun) is Sango, the thunder-god, a 

 name sometimes applied to the stone implements, which 

 are believed to be the bolts of Sango, who is also named 

 Dzakuta, the stone-thrower. The greatest reverence is 

 ext-ended to these stones, which are used as family 

 fetiches when they are found by ordinary persons." 

 " Dr. John Evans has remarked upon the strong general 



* I rather suspect that this word is the same as Oro, for the annual 

 fi'itiral of Oro at Ondo, in the Yoruba country, is called Oro T)oko, 

 for even natives pronounce identical words very differently — 

 H. P. FG. M. ' 



resemblance between West African stone implements and 

 those found in Greece and Asia Minor. In their 

 practice, when engaged sacrificially, of daubing these 

 stones with blood, palm oil, etc., the West Africans 

 resemble the Indians.' 



The collection in the writ-ers' possession, which con- 

 tains twenty-four specimens, are all, with the exception 

 of one, neolithic, and although diligent search was made, 

 no chipped specimens could be procured ; as Burton 

 remarks, they are apparently unknown. Man, though 

 very ancient in other tropicalf or sub-tropical parts of 

 Africa, in these districts of the West Coast probably 

 appeared at a later period owing to the swampy vege- 

 tation, disagreea.ble climate, and presumable volcanic 

 state of other portions. Moreover, here mankind does 

 not seem to have developed a want for stone implements, 

 whilst in other parts of the world he had long ago 

 passed the palfeolithic stage, for all those celts as yet 

 found are highly finished, and there are none there 

 that show a preparatory period of evolution. The 

 perfection of these instniments goes far to prove that 

 they were imported by migrating or concjuering races, 

 and that the ancient possessors of the low-lying forest 

 coasts of West Africa, if they ever existed, had never 

 even arrived at a Stone Age of any sort, being content 

 to subsist on what could be obtained by wooden instru- 

 ments, and on fruit and roots, torn by the hands from 

 their place of growth. 



The majority of the twenty-four specimens are of 

 felspathic rock, some light in colour and othei-s dark 

 whilst real lidites and igneous rock are the materials 

 from which the balance have been made. There is one 

 formed from augitic lava, and another consists of a 

 kind of augite and felspar. The exception already 

 referred to is a touchstone, which has been in use among 

 a family of native jewellers for the past century. It is 

 of black limestone. As will be seen from the photographs 

 of these celts, specimens Nos. 4, 14, 17, and 19, are par- 

 ticularly good in shape and size. No. 21, the 

 darkest and smoothest of the light gi-een (fel- 

 tpathic rock) axe-heads, is like in colour, and 

 probably in material (but not in shape), to some in the 

 Japanese section of stone implements in the British 

 Museum, marked Hakodate. Those axe-heads or wedges 

 in the British JMuseum, presented by Mr. Andrew 

 Swanzy, and collected by Mr. Winwood Eeadc at 

 Odumassie, near the Volta, and in the province of 

 Akwapim, Gold Coast, are none as broad at the edge 

 a* those of the present collection, only a solitai-y small 

 one approaching the same shape, but thei'e appear to be 

 none like No. 1 in either form or material. 



The Gold Coast is rich in these interesting pre-historic 

 remains. From one extreme of the colony to the other, 

 specimens are to be found, and we venture to think 

 the present collection a valuable addition to those al- 

 ready unearthed. We studied the subject, however, 

 more from an ethnological standpoint than any other. 



The similarity of ideas that prevails in the super- 

 stitious beliefs of the human race on the subject of 

 neolithic celts is well worthy of study, not so much on 

 account of the main idea that they are thunderbolts, 

 as for the almost identical beliefs obtaining as to the 

 wonderful projierties possessed by these stones. There 

 is universal belief in their being sovereign protectors 

 against lightning. The Norse peasants hung them in 



t"Appleton'3 Science Monthly" (London and New York), Nov., 

 1895, p. 25, etc., of " Primigenial Skeletons, the Flood and the Glacial 

 Period," by H. P. FitzGerald Marriott. 



