H.— ANTHROPOLOGY. 159 



cultures upon those already established in the region will be rendered 

 clearer when more detailed and precise data have been secured and can be 

 co-ordinated. 



Problems still awaiting solution abound in South Africa and call for 

 the onslaught of skilled and unbiassed investigators, who are prepared 

 conscientiously to modify and even jettison theories already propounded, 

 if new facts call for this sacrifice. Diagnosis gains by being cold-blooded 

 and impassive, and is the more sure if the domination of preconceived 

 ideas is held in restraint. 



One of the problems in which I am myself keenly interested is that 

 afforded by the Stone-age remains which are so abundant along the 

 Zambesi and its tributaries in the neighbourhood of the Victoria Falls. 

 The first stone implements from that district to be brought to notice were, 

 I believe, collected by Mr. A. J. C. Molyneux ; but many others have 

 since been obtained on the spot by Dr. Lamplugh, Mr. Franklin White, 

 Colonel Feilden and others. In the course of three visits which I have 

 paid to the Victoria Falls — in 1905, 1907 and 1910 ; collectively amounting 

 to a stay of thirty-seven days — I collected some 1,200-1,300 implements 

 and artificial flakes of chalcedony and quartzite. The numerous well- 

 defined implements are, with very few exceptions, of pronounced Lower- 

 palaeolithic fades, Chellean and Acheulian, and, but for the material of 

 which they are made, they might almost as well have been obtained from 

 the terrace-gravels of the River Thames or of the Somme. That is to say, 

 in form and technique they are absolutely comparable with types which 

 characterise the ' River-drift ' cultures of Western Europe. They might 

 be taken to indicate a late survival of these culture-phases, which had 

 persisted until relatively recent times on the periphery of their dispersal. 

 Or they may be regarded as an independent genesis of similar cultures, 

 unconnected with the northern series, and evolved in response to similar 

 environmental dictates. But evidence of very considerable antiquity is 

 afforded by the implements themselves, which are often heavily abraded 

 and patinated and frequently very highly glazed.' 



Still more important is the position in which many of the implements 

 are discovered. I have found some imbedded at various depths in old 

 alluvial deposits along the banks of the Zambesi, and of the Maramba 

 and Masui tributaries ; others were associated with or imbedded in thin 

 gravel drifts scattered over the bare basalt plateau below the line of the 

 Falls. This plateau is the ancient bed of the Zambesi over which the 

 river flowed before, by gradual recession of the Falls to their present 

 position, the upper portion of the Batoka Gorge had been eroded. 



If we are justified in assuming that the implementiferous gravel- drifts 

 distributed over the ancient river-bed and now lying 400-600 feet above 

 the present level of the river in the gorge, were deposited there by the 

 Zambesi itself, then there is direct evidence not only of antiquity, but of 

 extremely high antiquity. Lamplugh, who carefully surveyed the Batoka 

 Gorge in 1905, A. E. V. Zealley and several other skilled geologists have 



1 The nature of the peculiar and very intense ' glazing ' in this district has not, 

 beUeve, been finally diagnosed. It appears to me likely that it results from 

 deposition of silica from' silica- charged water (perhaps spray) which evaporated 

 rapidly from the hot, exposed surfaces of the chalcedonic implements. 



