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We are taking one particular spot in the hills of Western Thebes as an example, but there are plenty of others, such as the Wadi esh-Shêkh on the right bank of the Nile opposite Maghagha, whence Mr. H. Seton-Karr has brought back specimens of flint tools of all ages from the Palaeolithic to the Neolithic periods.
Koldewey curiously speaks of the saw-blades as 'palaeolithic. They are, of course, nothing of the sort. Characteristics: flint, chert, obsidian, green and red jasper, and quartz-crystal flakes, arrowheads, cores, and saw-blades. This ware is often very fine, so much so as to look as if wheelmade.
The town, raised all of a piece by Peter the Great, could claim no ancient history at all; but through every stick and stone that had been laid there stirred the spirit and soul of the ground, so that out of one of the sluggish canals one might expect at any moment to see the horrid and scaly head of some palaeolithic monster with dead and greedy eyes slowly push its way up that it might gaze at the little black hurrying atoms as they crossed and recrossed the grey bridge.
So convinced is he of this essential and ineradicable difference in his heart, that seeing traces of design in palaeolithic flint flakes, and so forth, he has "not the remotest doubt as to their being the work of human hands," "as impossible to doubt as it would be if we had found clasp-knives and carpenters adzes."
At the northern extremity of this cave is a natural niche in which lay more than thirty skeletons, some of men, some of women, and some of children, mixed together in the greatest confusion. Worked flints, bone stilettos, and ornaments lay around, all. of the forms characteristic of Palaeolithic times.
The Nampe image, the oldest relic yet discovered, "revolutionizes our conception of this early palaeolithic age," being a "more artistic and better representation of the human form than the little idols of many comparatively modern and civilized people," very like those in Mexico, "believed to be not much older than the date of the Spanish conquest" "and in truth, I believe, contemporaneous."
If we could see their work in wood, we might discern a more diversified skill or we might not. As it is, we can but conclude in the light of our very imperfect knowledge that in mind no less than in body mankind of Early Palaeolithic times displayed a fixity of type almost amounting to that of one of the other animal species.
In Europe generally, polished celts belong to the Megalithic or latest division of the Neolithic, but this implement appeared much earlier, and in a sense succeeded the Palaeolithic hand-axe.
They took a pride in their work, did the men of old; and, until you can learn to sympathize, you are no anthropologist. During the succeeding main stage of the palaeolithic epoch there was a decided set-back in the culture, as judged by the quality of the workmanship in flint. Those were the days of the Mousterians who dined off woolly rhinoceros in Jersey.
How often have the contents of a passage giving access to a cave been confounded with those of the cave itself! Hence deplorable errors, which it is impossible to rectify now. Evans and Geikie in their turn assert the absence in England of Palaeolithic pottery, and Sir J. Lubbock energetically maintains this opinion.
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