922 REPORT—1896, 
From a Twelfth Dynasty scarab to the book of Durrow or the font of Deerhurst 
isa farcry. But, as it was said of old, ‘Many things may happen in a long time.’ 
We have not to deal with direct transmission per saltwm, but with gradual propa- 
gation through intervening media. This brief survey of ‘ the Eastern Question in 
Anthropology ’ will not have been made in vain if it helps to call attention to 
the mighty part played by the early Aigean culture as the mediator between 
primitive Europe and the older civilisations of Egypt and Babylonia. Adequate 
recognition of the Eastern background of the European origins is not the ‘ Oriental 
Mirage.’ The independent European element is not affected by its power of assimi- 
lation. In the great days of Mycene we see it already as the equal, in many ways 
the superior, of its teachers, victoriously reacting on the older countries from which 
it had acquired so much, I may perhaps be pardoned if in these remarks, availing 
myself of personal investigations, I have laid some stress on the part which Crete 
has played in this first emancipation of the European genius. There far earlier 
than elsewhere we can trace the vestiges of primeval intercourse with the valley 
of the Nile. There more clearly than in any other area we can watch the con- 
tinuous development of the germs which gave birth to the higher Agean culture. 
There before the days of Phcenician contact a system of writing had already been 
worked out which the Semite only carried one step further. To Crete the earliest 
Greek tradition looks back as the home of divinely inspired legislation and the first 
centre of maritime dominion. 
Inhabited since the days of the first Greek settlements by the same race, 
speaking the same language, and moved by the same independent impulses, Crete 
stands forth again to-day as the champion of the European spirit against the 
yoke of Asia. 
The following Report and Papers were read :— 
1. Report on the Mental and Physical Condition of Children. 
See Reports, p. 592. 
2. Stone Implements in Somaliland. By H. W. Srron-Karr, 
The author exhibited at Ipswich (‘ Proc. Brit. Assoc.,’ 1895, pp. 824-5) specimens 
of Paleolithic implements collected in Somaliland (1893-4-5), mostly broad- 
trimmed flakes of ‘le Moustier’ type. He has since (1895-6) revisited the country 
with the special object of collecting such implements, and secured many hundreds 
of them, ranging up to nine inches in length, during a journey of nineteen days, in 
about 8° N. latitude, and 1,000-2,000 feet above Red Sea level. They are some- 
times eroded even to a depth of +4, inch; the eroded areas have a chalcedonic ap- 
pearance, and the chipping is only preserved on the raised patches. 
These are the first Palzeoliths from this part of tropical Africa. ‘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. Their great interest consists in the identity of their forms with 
those found in the Pleistocene deposits of W. Europe and elsewhere. . . . Under 
any circumstances this discovery aids in bridging over the interval between Palzo- 
lithic man in Britain and in India, and adds another link to the chain of evidence 
by which the original cradle of the human race may eventually be identified, and 
tends to prove the unity of race between the inhabitants of Asia, Africa, 
and Europe in prehistoric times.’ (Sir John Evans, ‘Communication to the Royal 
Society,’ April 27, 1896.) 
On the way home the author stayed some days on the Upper Nile, and found 
implements, perhaps Paleolithic, on the undisturbed surface of the Egyptian 
desert plateau. 
The author calls attention to the fact that in the later Paleolithic age the 
glacial cold may have driven Paleolithic man towards the equator; and that 
although hitherto more Paleolithic implements have been found in well-searched 
