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, but 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 au immeasurably fax-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 be 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 situ 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