Primaeval Man in the Valley of the Lea. 
141 
there is no proof that they knew a spear with a handle or 
an arrow tipped with flint. The fact of these ancient men 
stopping when they had designed a few useful forms of 
implements seems to prove that their inventive powers were 
sluggish. 
The age of all the implements must be very great, and it is 
hardly possible just now to say how great. No one can at 
present give their age in years, hut we can, by comparison 
with other old things, gain some idea of their immense 
antiquity. For instance, the architectural remains of Egypt, 
the temples, the pyramids, and the tombs are generally 
looked upon as very ancient objects, yet these antiquities 
are now known to be the works of a civilisation that was 
at some remote period preceded by a Neolithic age, when 
the people of Egypt knew no other tools and weapons than 
such as were made of chipped and polished stone. The 
recent discoveries of General A. L. Pitt-Rivers, Sir John 
Lubbock, and other archaeologists have decisively proved 
that even this Neolithic age of Egypt was but as yesterday 
in comparison with an immeasurably far-off Palaeolithic age, 
when river-side men lived where Egypt now is, and there 
made their rude tools of the stones of the district. Sir John 
Lubbock has found an implement of Palaeolithic type on 
the surface in Algeria, whilst General A. L. Pitt-Rivers 
has found numerous flakes of the same age in situ near 
Thebes. Some of these objects were found naturally em¬ 
bedded in the walls of indurated gravel forming the tombs, 
and were there seen in section. Such discoveries were, 
however, only to he expected when one remembers the 
quartzite implements of the laterite of Madras. One of my 
English examples, broken in two, has the impression of a 
fossil shell in the middle, and this flaw caused the fracture of 
the implement.. Another implement found by me in sitii at 
Clapton has a Flustra embedded near the point, and the 
Flustra is exposed by the flaking executed by the primaeval 
men ; under the microscope the structure of the Flustra is as 
clear as when the organism was alive. Did the Palaeolithic 
man notice it when he had finished the instrument ? How 
