434 Evans — Flint-cores from the Indus. 



Where the process of chipping off flakes has been carried on success- 

 fully all round the block, the resulting core or nucleus will present 

 a polygonal outline, with slight depressions at the upper end of each 

 facet, showing what may be termed the "impressions" of "the bulb 

 of percussion," due to the blow by which each flake was dislodged. 

 In the Plate the cores from the Indus are rejoresented with the upper 

 end, or that at which the blows were administered, downwards, but 

 the "impressions" of the bulbs of percussion are well exhibited in 

 Mg. 3. 



To strike off from a large block such a number of successive 

 flakes as to leave merely an elongated polygonal nucleus, it is of 

 course necessary that the material of the block, besides splitting 

 readily from a blow, should be perfectly homogeneous in texture. 

 With ordinary chalk flints this is rarely the case ; and even for the 

 gun-flint manufacture, where the form of the flakes is not of so 

 much importance as if they were destined for knives, great care is 

 taken in the selection of the flint, and in keeping it uniformly moist. 

 The best material which has been used for the manufacture of 

 siliceous knives is obsidian, which, so late as the days of Cortes, was 

 used in Mexico for this purpose, and even for razors, two of which, 

 however, were used up in shaving a single person.^ Some of the 

 obsidian cores from Mexico approximate very closely in form to 

 these from India. One of them xaskj be seen engraved in Tyler's 

 Anahuac, p. 98. The flint from which the specimens now under 

 consideration are formed, is of a light fawn colour, of the same 

 character as that from which the implements from the laterite-beds, 

 described by Messrs. Foote and King, have been fashioned. If, as is 

 not imj)robable, it partakes more of the nature of a quartzite than of 

 a real flint, its original arenaceous origin may have conduced to that 

 homogeneity which is so essential to uniformity of fracture. In the 

 case of the flint-cores and flakes from the neighbourhood of Jub- 

 bulpore, of which I communicated an account to the Society of 

 Antiquaries, the material was principally chalcedony, and the cores, 

 though most symmetrically formed, were much smaller. 



The finding of such relics " three feet below the rock in the bed 

 of the river " Indus would, at first sight, point to a great antiquity, 

 even geologically speaking, for them. But further details are necessaiy 

 as to the character of this rock before any definite conclusions can 

 be safely come to on this point f and certainly, judging from the 



1 In the Mineralogical and Geological Gallery of the British Museum (Room III., 

 Table-case 45) is eshibited a very beautiful and slender Obsidian core from Mexico, 

 agreeing closely in general form with those figured in Plate XVI. It is one of the 

 " Crach erode Collection," and is thus described by the donor : — "Obsidian; Black 

 Volcanic Glass ; remarkable for breaking into Prisms ; this has 14 sides. From Peru, 

 •where they make mirrors of it. Magellan's Cronstedt, p. 917 ; Kirwan, vol. i. p. 264 ; 

 Babington, p. 9, sp. 24." [Cracherode Catalogue.] There are besides three flakes 

 and numerous examples of Obsidian in its unwrought state, both from Iceland and 

 Mexico. Many other specimens of cores and flakes in Obsidian and Flint are ex- 

 hibited in the Ethnological Department of the British Museum. 



- In a subsequent letter to the Editor, General T-wemlow states that neither chalk 

 nor flint are found near the spot where the flint-cores were embedded, and that the 

 rock is a Limestone. — H. W. 



I 



