Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/816

796 A still more conclusive proof is furnished by Professor Henry W. Haynes, of Boston, who reports a number of wrought flints from Egypt, among them several clearly characterized St. Acheul hatchets.

In the February number (1869) of the "Matériaux pour l'Histoire de l'Homme," M. Adrien Arcelin first made the announcement that the grand Egyptian civilization, like all other civilizations, was preceded by an age of stone. He had just collected in Upper Egypt several chipped flints. Toward the close of the same year this discovery was confirmed by Messrs. Lenormant and Hamy. All the specimens brought home by these earliest explorers might be regarded as belonging to the Robenhausen epoch, or age of polished stone—only one specimen, presented to the museum of St. Germain, came anywhere near the St. Acheul type.

After Arcelin's discovery, collections of dressed flints were multiplied in Egypt, though without throwing much light upon the question. But Sir John Lubbock, in an essay illustrated with fine plates, gave figures of three flint implements found at Luxor and at Abydos, which are undoubtedly St. Acheul hatchets.

Among the wrought flints brought from Egypt and exhibited by Mr. Haynes are several which incontestably are of the quaternary type. Among them we see scrapers and arrow-heads, the latter belonging to a type which in France occurs only in glacial formations. The collection also embraces more ancient forms, preglacial forms, referable to the early portion of the Quaternary period, viz., St. Acheul hatchets of flint.

These St. Acheul hatchets come from two very distinct localities: one lot is from the neighborhood of Luxor, in Upper Egypt, the other from the environs of Cairo, in Lower Egypt. The flint used, as is clearly proved by Delanoue, comes from the nummulitic formations. These formations are found in situ in Upper Egypt; and the St. Acheul hatchets of that region are as a rule heavier and better wrought, above all, more completely wrought. In the environs of Cairo there are no rocks in situ; and, as for flint, only rounded nodules are found. These nodules have been wrought into the forms of implements. This is easily seen, for all the St. Acheul hatchets of that locality still bear at their base traces of the original rounded surface of the nodules.

From these archæological data, i. e., from the nature and the form of the objects, we may conclude that the man of the earliest Quaternary times lived in Egypt simultaneously with his existence in Europe, and that in both of these regions his industrial development was about the same, extremely primitive.

And geological observation confirms these deductions. It was not on the surface of plateaus that Mr. Haynes found these St. Acheul implements. On the contrary, most of them, at least those from the neighborhood of Luxor (forming the greater number), were found in the bottom of the ravines of Bab-el-Moluk. These ravines are cut deep