THE STONE AGE — PAST AND PRESENT, 221 



Going back two tliousand years or sOj record is to be found 

 at least of a partial Stone Age condition in North-Eastern 

 Africa. It appears from Herodotus that the African Ethiopians 

 in the army of Xerxes not only headed their arrows with sharp 

 stone, but had spears armed with sharpened horns of antelopes, 

 while the Libyans had wooden javelins hardened at the point 

 by fire.^ Strabo mentions in Ethiopia a tribe who pointed 

 their reed arrows in this way, and another who used as weapons 

 the horns of antelopes.^ It is interesting to observe that in 

 South Africa the spear headed in this way has survived up to 

 our own time ; Mr. Andersson saw the natives at Walfisch Bay 

 spearing the fish left at low water, with a gemsbock's horn at- 

 tached to a slender stick.^ 



Traces of a Stone Age in Egypt, in the use of the stone 

 arroW'head, and of the stone knife for ceremonial purposes, 

 have been already spoken of. No account of the finding of 

 stone implements in North Africa seems to have been pub- 

 lished, but Mr. Christy, in a jom-ney made in Algeria in 1863, 

 found them there, as elsewhere.* He met with flint flake- 

 knives, arrow-heads, and polished celts, at Constantino ; flakes, 

 arrow-heads, and a beautifully chipped lance-head of quartz- 

 ite, at Dellys on the coast; and flakes and a large pick- 

 shaped instrument, from the desert south-east of Oran, on the 

 confines of Morocco. At Bou-Merzoug, on the plateau of the 

 Atlas, south of Constantino, he found, in a bare, deserted, 

 stony place among the mountains, a collection of tombs, 1000 

 or 1500 in number, made of the rude limestone slabs, set up 

 with one slab to form a roof, so as to make, not mere crom- 

 lechs, but closed chambers where the bodies were packed in. 

 Tradition says that a wicked people lived there, and for their 

 sins stones were rained upon them from heaven, so they built 

 these chambers to creep into. Near this remarkable necro- 

 polis, Mr. Christy found flint-flakes and arrow-heads. 



1 Herod., vii. 69, 71. ^ Strabo, svi. 4, 9, 11. ^ Andersson, p. 15. 



* A paper by Mr. Christy, embodying some account of his discoveries in the 

 reindeer cares of Central France, and mentioning his finding stone implements 

 in North Africa, and the distribution of such in different parts of the world, was 

 read before the Ethnological Society in June, 1864. 



