198 R. Bruce Foote — Remarhs on 3It. BalVs Note. [Nov. 



laded to, that it is quite impossible to be certain as to their real nature 

 so neither of these finds required any notice at my hands. Mr. Le 

 Mesurier's and Mr. Theobald's discoveries of celts in Bandelkhand do not 

 belong to South India, so I should never have dreamt of claiming priority 

 over them, even had I not known that they were made prior to mine by 

 four and three years respectively. 



The expression used by me when I said that the discovery of pale- 

 olithic quartzite implements in the lateritic formations near Madras 

 " really started prehistoric research in this country " was hardly too 

 strong, for it attracted the attention of scores of observers where there 

 had been none before, just as the recognition of Boucher de Perthes' merit 

 in discovering the flint implements of the Somme valley was really the 

 day-break in Europe of Prehistoric Archgeology as now understood. 



Mr. Ball thinks I have offered nothing in exchange for his theory ! 

 I think I have offered a number of important facts which abundantly 

 show how utterly baseless and untenable it was. The great discoveries 

 since made he loftily passes by with the remark that it is to be regretted 

 that my long devotion to the subject, and the great opportunities I have 

 enjoyed " have not been more productive of conclusive generalizations 

 as to the relations between the different classes of implements " ! Here I 

 would only remark that the paper he criticises contains two very im- 

 portant generalizations : firstly, that the makers of the cores and flakes 

 were a neolithic people, to wit the celt- workers themselves ! Secondly, 

 that the later polished stone period overlaps the beginning of the ii'on 

 period ; the early iron- workers being the lineal descendants of the celt- 

 makers, and to some extent celt-makers themselves. To these I will 

 add a third and fourth generalization, namely, that the early iron- workers 

 were the stock from which sprang the Dravidian tribes at present 

 inhabiting the Peninsula, and (fourthly) that no evidence has yet been 

 obtained which can safely connect the chipped stone folk with the 

 makers of polished celts. There is then no ground for assuming, as 

 Mr. Ball did, " that the Dravidians who came from the North- West " 

 may have been the people who manufactured the flakes and cores of 

 North- Western and Central India " and who afterwards, when they had 

 pushed off the Dekan basalt further south, took to making the chipped 

 quartzite axes from a material which then became more accessible to 

 them."* The fact is the early Dravidians appear first as a neolithic, 

 not as a palaeolithic people, and had by the beginning of the iron period 

 attained to considerable proficiency in the manufacture of stone imple- 

 ments in great variety, of pottery of considerable elegance of shape and 

 fineness of material, and lastly of articles of ornament such as necklaces 



* Loc. eit., p. 413. 



1 



