October 31, 1912] 



NATURE 



249 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



[The Editor does not hold himself responsible jor 

 opinion'^ expressed by his correspondents. Neither 

 can he undertake to return, or to correspond with 

 the writers of, rejected manuscripts intended for 

 this or any other part of Nature. No notice is 

 taken of anonymous communications.] 



The Sub-Crag Flint Implements. 



The series of flints from the sub-Crag detritus bed, 

 collected by Mr. J. Reid Moir, and figured in my paper 

 in the Phil. Trans, of May, 1912, are now placed in the 

 Ethnological Department of the British Museum, 

 Bloomsbury, under the care of Sir Hercules Read, 

 K.C.B., keeper of that department. So many 

 archaeologists have been anxious to see them that I 

 have been glad to avail myself of Sir Hercules Read's 

 kind offer to place them on view, and to allow serious 

 students to have access to them. They include the 

 highly flaked, somewhat hooked specimen from the 

 mid-glacial sands of Ipswich (Fig. 6 of my memoir), 

 and the well-shaped rostro-carinate implement of the 

 same age from Foxhall (Figs. 2 and 3 of my memoir). 

 Besides seven well-marked rostro-carinate sub- 

 Crag implements, the series includes the large and 

 heavy flint with a '" Chellean " flaking on both faces 

 at one end (Figs. 38, 39, and 40 of my memoir) and 

 several smaller pieces which, if found in river gravels, 

 would be admitted at once as typical scrapers and 

 borers ; also the curious four-sided pyramid figured 

 in my memoir (Figs. 25 and 26). 



It will now be possible for prehistorians to discuss 

 the probability of these pieces having been flaked by 

 human agency, with the actual specimens in their 

 hands. There is, I may say, no possibility of a doubt 

 as to the provenance of these flints. With the excep- 

 tion of the two mid-glacial pieces, thev all come from 

 the remarkable and well-defined Suffolk bone-bed, or 

 detritus bed, at the very base of the Red Crag. Fur- 

 ther, there is no doubt that this deposit was not laid 

 down under torrential action nor on a wave-beaten 

 shore ; nor are the pieces in it fractured by any kind 

 of pressure or disturbance in situ. They were tran- 

 quilly deposited where they are, and many have the 

 small Balanus of the Crag sea affixed to their broken 

 surfaces. 



To the question, " How have these flints been 

 fractured so as to give them their present form?" 

 three different answers are given by three separate 

 groups of observers. One group maintains that they 

 have been thus fractured by being knocked together 

 by heavy torrential waters or by waves breaking on a 

 beach ; a second group says that they have been 

 broken after deposition by the pressure of super- 

 incvnnbent deposit (or possibly by glacier-like ice 

 rnoving on and above the deposit) ;"a third group, of 

 which I am one, points to the definite form (rostro- 

 carinate, Chellean, scraper) given by the fracture, and 

 considers it impossible, in our present state of know- 

 ledge of the fracture of flint, to attribute this definite 

 and apparently purposeful fracturing to anv coin- 

 cidence of natural breakage, and attributes them to 

 human design and action. 



In reference to these diverging views, it is 

 necessary to take account of the facts (i) that 

 it is generally admitted that such forms as 

 these are what we should expect to find as the 

 earlier work of man, preceding the more skilfully 

 worked implements of the river gravels; (2) that no 

 specimens of flints fractured by torrential or bv wave 

 action of water and corresponding in size, in form, 

 and definite shaping to the sub-Crag flints have as 

 yet been discovered or produced experimentallv. The 

 broken flints of the flint-mill at Mantes, put forward 

 NO. 2244, VOL. 90] 



by M. Boule^ have no resemblance to them; nor have 

 the pebbles, with an occasional small fracture on the 

 surface, from the beach at Sherringham (Norfolk) any 

 resemblance to them. The advocates of torrential 

 or wave action of water have yet to take the initial 

 step of showing that such action can actually produce 

 anything of the sort. Moreover, they have to show 

 that there is independent evidence of a possibility, let 

 alone a probability, of the sub-Crag flints having' been 

 e.x.posed to violent interconcussion by water. The 

 "violent concussion theory" is, at present, without a 

 single fact in its support. (3) We have to recognise that 

 no specimens of flints fractured by pressure in natural 

 conditions have been "laid on the table " which in any 

 way resemble the sub-Crag implements. The fractured 

 fragments of flint procured by M. Breuil at Bel Assize 

 (which I have examined) have no resemblance to 

 them. Moreover, there is no evidence to show that 

 M. Breuil 's specimens were, as he asserts, broken by 

 the pressure of superposed deposits. On the contrary, 

 no such fracture by the weight of superposed sandy 

 strata can be admitted. .According to ascertained facts 

 as to the transmission of pressure by sand, there is no 

 reason to suppose that fracture can be so produced. 



In regard to this suggestion, as in regard to 

 that of torrential action, the careful examination of 

 the deposit in which the sub-Crag flints of Suffolk 

 occur renders it absolutely certain that no such pres- 

 sure has acted upon the flints where they at present 

 are found. Here, again, we are referred (by M. 

 Breuil 's supporters) to some unknown and fanciful pre- 

 cedent conditions (of which there is no evidence) in 

 order that the impossible crushing by a superposed 

 sandy deposit may take place. (4) We must note 

 that the hypothesis that these flints were purposely 

 fractured by man is the only one which explains their 

 special shape and the "directed" character of the 

 blows which produced the fractures and the shape. 

 It is also the only hypothesis which accounts for the 

 fact, pointed out to me by Prof. Flinders Petrie, that 

 all of these fractured flints from the sub-Crag bed, 

 shaped according to definite and special pattern, 

 readily fit to the hand and at once fall into position 

 as useful picks or hammers. It mav be said that we 

 have no independent evidence of theexistence of man 

 at this epoch, just as we have no evidence of torrential 

 waters or vast pressure. But I li^ve reason to believe 

 that such independent evidence of man's presence at 

 this epoch in this country is alreadv in the hands of 

 competent geologists, and will soon be made public. 



Lastly, I may say a word as to the remarkable 

 scratching of the fractured surface of many of these 

 flints. I have attributed it to the action of ice, similar 

 to (but not precisely identical with) that which causes 

 the scratching of rocks and rock pebbles by modern 

 glaciers. There is other evidence, as noticed by Lyell, 

 for the presence of ice — transporting large blocks of 

 flint in an unrolled condition — during the deposition of 

 the Suffolk bone-bed at the base of the Reg Crag. 

 But the human origin of the fracturing of the flints 

 we are discussing is not bound up with the hypothesis 

 that the scratches on them are due to ice-action. I am 

 not aware of any evidence in favour of any other 

 explanation of the presence of these scratches. 



It is very evident to me, from the various opinions 

 which have been expressed in regard to the history 

 of the sub-Crag flints, which I consider to be imple- 

 ments fabricated by man, that there is an extraordinary 

 lack of precise information, at this moment, as to the 

 properties of flint, the various possible causes of its 

 fracture (including heat and cold, as well as blows and 

 pressure), and the means of judging what particular 

 causes have been at work in fracturing any given 

 specimen. It is in consequence of the vagueness of 

 published and approved statements on the properties 



