82 
THE EVOLUTION OF THE ABROW 
and Central Africa, and it is upon these that I propose to base 
my observations. 
First with regard to the arrows of early man. These vary 
from the comparatively rude examples we find in East Africa 
and usually made of obsidian, to the beautifully finished 
Neolithic products of Europe. The better African examples 
are leaf-shaped and well worked, but the majority are very 
rudely fashioned ; but of course one finds more of the ‘ wasters ’ 
or spoiled attempts than of those which were actually used 
and gradually lost in war or the chase. 
There are several problems in connection with these stone 
arrow-heads, one of which is the mode of attachment to the 
shaft of the arrow ; it would be very interesting too, to know 
whether the users had any means of balancing the arrow, for 
£ Y <w-~ a 
Method of attaching Stone Splinter to Arrow. S. Africa. 
(Peringuey.) 
a stone head would naturally make it very top-heavy ; the 
other important point is whether these people poisoned their 
arrows. 
Most of the hunter tribes in Africa to-day poison their 
arrows and the practice undoubtedly goes back a long way, 
and it would be interesting to endeavour to reconstruct the 
origins of this custom. It is comparatively easy to see what 
led primitive man to smear snake-poison on his arrows, but 
how he discovered that the sap of the Morijo tree ( Akokanthera 
Sdrin'peri) was an effective poison will probably never 
be adequately explained. Primitive man in Africa rarely 
got to the stage of fashioning a barb on his arrow points, and 
in South Africa, where thousands of arrow-heads have been 
found, only a very few are recorded in Peringuey’s monumental 
work : two sketches from that work are given, as they show 
the development of the barb in stone. For examples of the 
leaf-shaped arrow-head from East Africa see ‘ Early Man 
in East Africa,’ Part V of this Journal. 
