444 I, P. Mennell & E. C. Chubb— 
earliest Egyptian civilisation, but we find stone still employed by the 
Bantu for certain purposes, and in Rhodesia the question is still 
further complicated by the existence of numerous ruins built by an 
unknown race possessing a considerable degree of barbaric culture, but 
still employing primitive types of stone implements. Geological 
evidence is therefore more than usually necessary, but, when there is 
any, it is frequently very ambiguous owing to the characters of the 
superficial deposits. More often than not it is altogether lacking, the 
great majority of the implements found having been picked up on the 
surface. Colonel Feilden some time ago pointed out the probability 
of certain of the Zambezi implements being of vast antiquity,! and one 
of us had already formed a similar opinion in the course of a brief visit 
to the Victoria Falls. It is also probable that in other parts of 
Rhodesia the high-level laterites, corresponding to the plateau gravels 
of rivers like the Thames, are the source of the implements found 
where they occur, but, as in the case of the Zambezi, we are unable 
to afford absolute ‘proof, 
Many of the Rhodesian implements can with considerable éondence 
be ascribed to the Bushmen, from their being found in caves decorated 
with the well-known paintings of that primitive race. These paintings 
cannot usually be deemed of any great antiquity, but the fact that an 
implement is Bushman does not in any case prevent its being of con- 
siderable age, and it is not even any guarantee that it is not fully as 
ancient as the European paleoliths. And it need hardly be pointed 
out that all cave implements are not necessarily Bushman, as the caves 
may have had different occupants at different periods. But for con- 
clusive proofs of antiquity, it is necessary for the relics of human 
occupation to be associated with animal remains. Such remains have 
so far been exceedingly rare in Africa, and the recent discovery in 
Northern Rhodesia of fossil mammalian bones which proved to be 
associated with stone implements is therefore of great interest. 
Several casual references to the matter have already appeared in print, 
and at the risk of being somewhat premature in our conclusions it has 
seemed advisable to publish the following notes on the occurrence so 
as to place on record what has been definitely ascertained up to the 
present. Our investigations have been chiefly based on specimens in 
the Rhodesia Museum presented by the Broken Hill Company, 
Mr. Franklin White, Mr. Marshall Hole, and others, as well as on 
other material for the opportunity of examining which we are indebted 
to Mr. White and Mr. F. G. Colvile. 
The Rhodesian Broken Hill Mine is situated about 150 miles north’ 
of the Kafue River in North-Western Rhodesia. It contains extensive 
zine and lead deposits, which have a prominent outcrop in the 
shape of two small hills or ‘kopjes’ rising out of a ‘vlei,’ or 
swampy flat. The surrounding country is chiefly limestone, which 
is associated, in proximity to the ore-body, with schistose rocks, 
evidently altered sandy and shaly sediments, together with crashed 
bands of the limestone itself. There is granite not many miles distant, 
but the ores do not appear to have any direct connection. with an igneous 
1 Nature, vol. xxiii, p. 77. 
