230 Transactions of the Boyal Society of South Africa. 
sizes, but all large and of unmistakable Acheulean type. They are deeply 
and numerously pitted in the manner of those so abundantly met with in 
the Vaal Eiver gravels and elsewhere in this country. The material of 
which they are made is that of the rocks on which the carvings have 
been executed, namely, basalt. 
I want you to remember in connection with the claim for great 
antiquity which I make for these bouchers, the proof of which I gave 
before you, some time ago, of the no less great antiquity of the Vaal 
Eiver implements. A clean transverse fracture revealed the fact that 
closely and very deeply pitted as they were on the surface, the texture 
inside was not by nature pitted, and that therefore this outer pitting was 
due to weathering influences lasting for an incalculable period. In addition, 
it was also shown that round the periphery was a broad discolouration 
zone pointing to a beginning in the disintegrating action that would, within 
a given time, reduce to sand this very artefact of man. I showed also 
that not only the large pieces were so affected, but that the by-product in the 
shape of flakes were exhibiting the same zone of disintegration, in spite of 
offering less resistance, owing to their small size, to the long continuous 
action of the elements of which aeolian agency was, in all likelihood, the 
most potent. The same phenomenon obtains in these bouchers of 
Acheulean type found together with the Kinderdam petroglyphs. 
The white patina of the flint palaeoliths of Cisbury or Krapina falls 
almost into insignificance when compared with the action of ages on 
these South African palaeoliths. Yet they are connected with a mental 
development which points to a desire to fix certain events perhaps of the 
chase, perhaps connected with magic, as we shall see later on when I 
treat of pictures, painted or graved, and of others where both arts are 
combined. But the execution is of superior merit. It is not that of a 
beginner, but of an artist in full possession of his art ; there is no 
primitiveness here in this effort of the hand prompted by the mind. 
Yet this mind is that of a being who, if w^e judge by his stone 
weapons, should be either anterior, the same, or allied to a man who, 
as the Neandertal, was very likely not able to express his thoughts 
or his deeds in articulated speech. But if the mental and physical 
development of both was the same, we must become reconciled 
to the supposition that this skill in portraiture was possibly developed 
because of the impossibility he found himself in to express the 
thoughts germinating in his working brain in understandable articulated 
sounds. This difficulty was due to the shape of his lower jaw. I think 
that the fragment of the jaw of our " Boskop Man " will also be found to 
have the same peculiarity. As to the brain, that of the Neandertal is far 
in excess, in point of size, to that of any race of mankind, and the skull 
is the longest known. 
