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JULY, 1906.]
PYGMY FLINTS.
British Museum. Other English localities are Sevenoaks and Sittingbourne in Kent, a kitchen midden' at Hastings, and Lakenheath near Brandon in Suffolk. A set from the last-named place is preserved at Cambridge, and Dr. Gatty found some specimens were himself. He considers the Scunthorpe, Pennine Hills, and Lakenheath specimens only to be in exact agreement with those from India. The small implements found at other English sites are larger and coarser and not of the characteristic Indian forms. No examples from Scotland or Ireland have been recorded. In all, eight or ten English localities are known to Mr. Gatty as sites where minute implements are found, but of these only the three above named supply precisely the
Indian forms.
189
The foreign sites for miniature flint implements, agreeing closely in some cases at all events with the Vindhyan forms, are numerous. Mr. Read (op. cit. p. 109) states that "these minute and finely-chipped specimens of characteristic crescent, triangular, and rhomboidal forms are often called 'pygmy flints,' and are found in India (Wall, Case 43 and p. 101), Palestine, Egypt (Gallery, Case 152), North Africa, Southern Spain, Belgium," in addition to the English localities. Dr. Sturge of Nice, who possesses an exceptionally fine collection of large and small flint implements, found, as Mr. Gatty informs me, vast quantities of Indian types of 'pygmies' in 'a very restricted area' at Helouan (Helwan) in Egypt, and is much impressed by the very localised' distribution of the implements of this class in all parts of the world where they have been found. Besides the countries named by Mr. Read, 'pygmies' are said to be found in the Crimea and at Sinai. I have not, however, examined fully the accounts of the finds in all these regions, and in some cases the implements referred to may be merely small specimens of ordinary neolithic types, and not the characteristic forms of the Vindhyas, Scunthorpe, and Helwân.
C
The discoveries of pygmies' in Belgium have been very fully described and beautifully illustrated by M. É. de Pierpoint in an essay entitled Observations sur de très Petits Instruments en Silex, provenant en plusieurs stations Néolithiques de la région de la Meuse,' from which I proceed to abstract the principal statements.
The country in the valley of the Mense is full of traces of different periods of the Stone Age, but the 'pygmies' are found only in particular localities, and chiefly in the province of Namur, between the town of that name and Dinant, distant about fifteen miles to the South.
The implements, although not quite so small as those from Scunthorpe, are characterised by their minute size and delicate finish (ce qui les caractérise, c'est leur petitesse et leurs retouches délicates); and occur in five or six distinct forms. The crescent-shaped implements, bounded on the outside by an arc of a circle, and on the inside by a chord or a slightly bent curve, which are found at Cave No. 3 of Goyet in this region, are of somewhat large dimensions, about half an inch in length. This cave is considered to belong to the age of the mammoth. Crescents with blunt edges, which evidently were intended for use as blunt instruments, are sometimes found. The author notes that the crescent-shaped 'pygmies' occur also in the French province of Dordogne and at several localities in Spain, cluding Aguilar in Murcia. The implements in the shape of a scalene triangle are said to be characteristic of neolithic stations. The delicately worked straight-pointed flakes described as 'piercers' are said to extend from the end of the quarternary period of geology into the neolithic age, and seem to have been contemporary with the mammoth and rhinoceros.
Straight-pointed isosceles triangles with curved bases are plainly arrow-heads, and may be compared with the small iron arrow-heads now used in the Upper Congo region. But the examples
The 'pygmies' include trapezoidal,, as well as rhomboidal, Bulletin, Soc. Anthrop., Bruxelles, tome XIII., 1894-5.
forms,
