i64 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



specialised products or habits of man. In short, it is only possible to 

 reason convincingly when manufactures or arts and crafts have reached a 

 high point of intricacy. Let us take examples from flint-working, man's 

 earliest craft. It seems fair to say that the use of natural flints, perhaps 

 even of pre-Chellean or rostro-carinate and other forms which involve 

 the minimum of workmanship, might arise independently among various 

 types of almost simian man. But when it comes to elaborate chipping, 

 and when this chipping produces implements of identical and highly 

 specialised forms, then it is indeed logical to argue that this process and 

 these forms could only have been invented once and only in one region. 

 Chellean flints already seem to me to be so distinctly a product of a highly 

 specialised intelligence, which might have taken a hundred other forms, 

 that it must inevitably be inferred that a single type of man originated these 

 artefacts, even though they are found distributed over an immense area. 



Still more it might be supposed that when one more degree of elabora- 

 tion has been added, by the use of so peculiar a technique as pressing 

 off flakes as well as chipping, the logical inference was still stronger. 

 And if, further, this peculiar technique is combined with peculiar shapes, 

 then the case seems to be almost irresistible. To accept this would entail 

 some surprising consequences, linking, for instance, the Badarian culture 

 of earliest Egypt with the Solutrean of Europe and perhaps with other 

 even remoter places. Yet it is certainly good reasoning. It is curiously 

 significant, however, of the difficulty of arriving at any certain conclusions 

 that just as we might be ready to accept this theory of the Solutrean, 

 with all its far-reaching consequences, Menghin comes forward with the 

 assertion that the Solutrean style is the natural and inevitable product of 

 the juxtaposition of a core-working and a flake-working industry. 



In contrast to the doubts and uncertainties which beset all reasoning 

 based on the manufactures and products of early man, it is a relief to turn 

 to a field in which unquestionable logical certainty can be achieved. This 

 is when we are able to study man's action in moving and displacing natural 

 products. For when the natural distribution as known to geologists of 

 rocks, ores, and other natural products, is artificially changed there can 

 be no doubt that man has been at work. The direction of his movements 

 can be traced, the motive of his action can be divined, and even the intensity 

 of his action can be measured. Thus if a certain kind of flint is peculiar 

 to Grand Pressigny in France and implements of that flint are found in 

 Switzerland, there can be no doubt that Switzerland is trading with 

 Pressigny. Similarly, if gold combined with antimony is known only 

 to occur in Transylvania, it is a just, though a surprising, inference that 

 the sceptre of a very early Egyptian king, living about 3000 B.C., which 

 shows this unique combination of metals, is made of gold from Tran- 

 sylvania. To take a simple example from nearer home : if a number of 

 stones in the circles of Stonehenge are of a type peculiar to Wales, they 

 must have been transferred from Pembrokeshire to Salisbury Plain by 

 man. In short, whenever the rare and precious stones used for ornament, 

 the quarry stones used for building, or the peculiar metals and alloys 

 used for jewellery and weapons can be shown to occur naturally only in 

 one place and yet to be used in widely different areas, that is certain and 



