ON PKIMITIVE MAN : I. HIS TIMES AND HIS COMPANIONS. 259 



conical form on both sides, and is exactly the same kind of hole 

 that is made by the South American Indians at the present time 

 in sharks' teeth which are used as a kind of ornaraent or raounted 

 in a stick as a saw. These holes are said to be done by boring 

 animals, and in some cases they no doubt were so, bat in other 

 cases the holes have apparently been bored by sharp flints, and 

 seem to me to differ from the boring of animals. This is, I think, 

 very fair prima facie evidence that man might have been here at 

 that time. Then the bone which Professor Capellini describes 

 always struck me as an important one. These flat cetacean bones 

 have marks crossing each other. Now, if a shark got hold of a 

 bone of that sort, all the scratches would be parallel to each 

 other.* Furthermore, the scratches ai'e semi-circular, and that is 

 exactly the shape they would be if they were done by a carving 

 instrument turning round a centre and the amount of curvature 

 of these scratches is just about the amount that it would be 

 necessary for a man, turning his hand round, to make ; a large 

 shark would probably make them of a different curvature, but 

 here is exactly the same curvature that I should make if I took 

 the bone and scraped it frora the edge holding the knife in the 

 hand, and the radius is about the proper length. 



The Chairman. — But they had no knives. 



Professor Blake. — No, but they had flint instruments. They 

 would work them round and the centre would be about the middle 

 of the hand. If the bone is scratched without that curvature, it 

 seems to me to be very little evidence, as in the cases brought 

 forward to show that animals might have done it, but looking 

 first on the slanting side which is on the shorter radius, and 

 secondly on the amount of curvature that a man would make on 

 the bone, I think it is fair evidence of their being done by man. 

 With regard to their being found in marine strata, it seems to me 

 possible that man might have been able to live on the sea at that 

 time ; i.e., in boats or something of that sort. In beds of about 

 the same age in Ital}'' there were found what appeared to be the 

 remains of father, mother and children together, which showed a 

 certain amount of family life in this early period. These appear 

 to show that the men of that period may have got to sea. There 

 is also a skull, found in British Columbia, which had curious 

 pieces of it cut out such as we now call trepanning the skull. 



* Professor T. McK. Hughes, F.R.S., has dealt very fully with this 

 question, see Transactions of Victoria Institute, vol. xxiii, p. 209. 



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