REVIEWS OF RECENT LITERATURE. 
ANTHROPOLOGY. 
The Neolithic Period of Human Culture in Northern Africa. 
The February number (Feb. 15, 1899) of the Revue de Z’ Ecole 
d’ Anthropologie presents under this title an able article from the 
pen of Professor Zaborowski, the Archivar of the Paris School of 
Anthropology. 
The author reviews numerous observations and arrives at the con- 
clusion that, during the neolithic period, the peoples of the whole of 
northern Africa, including Egypt and a large part of the desert, were 
racially, as well as by their civilization, closely interrelated. 
Who these ancient North-Africans were, ethnically, is not certain. 
Among the most ancient Egyptian skulls there are none of negroes, 
and hence the prehistoric Egyptians were not Asiatics who invaded 
new regions, driving away the black indigenes. Later on, negro 
skulls appear, indicating an early slave trade. 
Not much is known yet of the neolithic period in Sahara and 
Algiers ; nevertheless there were known, as early as 1883, seventeen 
ancient stations in the Sahara, where stone implements were found. 
The finds generally yielded numerous knives and saws, some arrow 
points, scrapers, etc., some of the specimens showing considerable 
art; there were also commonly found fragments of large ostrich eggs, 
some of these pieces being in the form of ornaments. Also fragments 
of black ornamented pottery were found. These articles were used 
at a time when the Sahara was watered by rains and had an abun- 
dant vegetation. Near the wells of El-Hassi the specimens lie in a 
layer of mud, under a layer of sedimentary limestone 50 cm. in 
thickness. 
The stone implements are found principally between Laghouat and 
El-Golea, at Ain-Taiba, and in the vicinity of Ouargla. Thé natives 
of these places know nothing of the origin of these articles, and 
declare that they are the weapons of the spirits of the air, the 
“djinn.” Large shops where the implements were made have also 
been discovered, and in these shops division of labor was noticeable. 
Axes are extremely rare, and those that are found were probably 
brought in by trade. 
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