or in the neighbourhood of "vleis," in the South-Western part of Cape Colony. Mr. J. P. Johnson has figured some "highly characteristic crescents,' as he terms them, in what he calls the river deposits of Riverton Island, on the Vaal River.

It is not at all unlikely, with the method of gum-cement which we now know obtained, that these semi-crescent-shaped tools with one cutting edge or two were used here also for barbing arrows or perhaps harpoons. No evidence that they were used in that manner has so far been obtained, it is true, either here or in Europe, but that such a form of attachment existed here is proved by the arrows in Pl. XVIII., Fig. 142.

That the majority of our pygmies are borers or drills, or parers of ostrich egg-shell discs is patent in Algeria and in the Soudan,* whence many specimens are exact duplicates of ours, the "pygmies" served there the same purposes, and were manufactured in all likelihood by the same race of men.

These pygmies of Europe are considered by some to belong to the initial period of the Neolithic Age. With us they have lasted to this day, and are most usually connected with the ! kwès, grooved mortars, bone tools, pottery, &c.

In the Aurignacian period of Europe, however, we begin to find chips and nuclei which are also singularly like South African ones; the published figurest of the finds in the stations of Hundesteig, Krems, Southern Austria, correspond altogether with those of our Figs. 139 and 145, and many with those of Fig. 140.

Cf. Debruge, Les burins et les silex de forme géométrique de l'Atlas "L'homme préhistorique," 1905.

"Les stations sahariennes ont fourni à M. Foureau de nombreux fragments d'oeufs d'autruche les uns très délicatement gravés, les autres taillés en forme de petites rondelles perforées à leur centre. Pour travailler ces coquilles d'œuf, l'ouvrier eut fréquemment brisé son œuvre avant de l'avoir achevée, et les petits silex à dos abattu répondaient fort bien à cet usage." Verneaux, in Foureau's Mission Saharienne, pp. 1109–1110.

Hoerns, "Der diluviale Mensch.," p. 119, Fig. 44.

CHAPTER X.

BONE TOOLS AND STONE SHARPENERS.

Bone- and stag-horn tools were greatly in use in the SolutrianMagdalenian times, but bone tools have not prevailed in the South African lithic epoch. This is the more surprising in view of the undoubted Aurignacian and Magdalenian facies of many of the stone pieces.

The scarcity of the find seems to justify the assumption that the utility of bone as a material was not quite realised.

These bone-tools can be arranged in three categories: Knives, awls, arrow-tips. No bone ornament, either bored for suspension or otherwise, has, as yet, been discovered that can be connected with the stone industry.

KNIVES.

The knives are very scarce. I know of four examples only, and all have been found in shell-mounds in the open, or in cave-shelters. They were possibly used for detaching the molluscs from univalve or bivalve shells. Cut 2 of Fig. 193, Pl. XXVI., is very blunt, and bears numerous traces of short, sub-transverse incisions made plainly by a stone scraper-knife. These incisions must be posterior to the shaping of this tool by polishing. Cut 1 of Fig. 172, which, like Cut 2 of Fig. 193, is from one of the Outeniqua-Tzitzikama Caves, has the edges plainly ground. Cut 172 may have been a knife, although it may also have been used as a spear-head. It is made from the rib of a ruminant, is thin and smoothed on one face only. I know of another exactly alike, but smaller, found with a number of bone awls and arrow shafts in a rock-shelter.

AWLS AND ARROW POINTS.

Awls or bodkins are arrow-tips.

more

numerous than either knives or

This is the more surprising considering that these awls were used for stitching skins together-which is undoubtedly the case-for the aborigines had close at hand the hard, long thorns of several Acaciatrees, which would have proved quite as effective. But custom dies. hard, as the whole account of our South African neolithic industry proves but too well.

An examination of these awls or bodkins shows that those from the cave-shelters of the seaboard are of a better finish and also the

most effective, cf. Cuts 3 to 7 of Fig. 193. The long awls of Fig. 194 are made of the hollow wing-bones of sea-birds, and two of these are the only objects of stone or bone known to me that show decoration.

Cut 1 of Fig. 193 is very massive. Its perfectly smoothed anterior part is difficult to explain, but it would prove useful in smoothing the hole of the ! kwè, several of which were found in the necropolis where this boring tool was discovered.

Cuts 6 and 7 of Fig. 193 might have served equally well as arrow

points and as awls. I know of one similar to Cut 7 which is made It is from the Orange Free State, whence also came the

of stone.

In the inland districts shelters these piercing bone tools are not so well finished, and they may have been utilised for other purposes. The four Cuts on the upper right of Fig. 195 are flat, and these tools

may have been used for mat-making. They were found at a great depth in boring a well, in the Smithfield district of the Orange Free

These bone implements will be treated of respectively in the chapter dealing with the Shell-mounds, Kitchen-middens, Caves, or Rock-shelters in which they were discovered.