26 
EARLY MAN IN BRITISH EAST AFRICA 
in the Rift Valiev and other places alongside worked pieces ; 
but a core from which flakes have been artificially removed 
has been recently discovered. The implements are usually 
w r orked on one side only, and are classed as monohedral ; occasion- 
ally one finds one which is holokedral, or worked on all sides. 
These were almost certainly contemporaneous, but fashioned 
by workers w r ho were specially adroit at the industry. The 
better specimens are usually found singly, and are probably 
the heads of arrows lost in the chase. If a quantity of worked 
stones are found in association, they are probably a collection 
of the wasters or failures ; no stone arrow-head with a tang has 
yet come to light. 
The Kikuyu people have a legend of a former race called 
the Gumba, of pigmy stature, and they say that the sites of 
their old villages can be traced ; two localities are mentioned, 
one near Kikuyu Station and the other in Kenya Province, 
near the Tana Valley, and it is said that fragments of their 
pottery are sometimes found when cultivation is going on. 
Now near Kikuyu Station numerous worked flakes are to 
be found ; no pottery has yet come to hand, but it is possible 
that the Gumba legend is a traditional record of the existence 
of the Stone Age men. 
In Kavirondo, and a few other places, certain jasper beads 
have, been found, and one might jump to the conclusion 
that these were relics of the Stone Age. So they are, in the sense 
that all stone beads are examples of early industries ; but the 
beads in question have, it is believed, wandered down from 
ancient Egypt and were made by skilled workmen of a com- 
paratively high plane of culture, for it is inconceivable that 
a Stone Age savage, who had only discovered how to chip rude 
obsidian implements, could accurately bore a truly circular 
hole of small diameter through an extremely hard material 
such as jasper. There is another very interesting point about 
these beads, and that is that they were made from pebbles, 
and besides being bored are frequently roughly ground or 
rubbed down into either six-sided prisms or a double six- 
sided pyramid, and this is believed to be mimetic of a com- 
mon natural crystalline form, the six-sided quartz prism 
or pyramid. 
