Exhibition of Stone Implements from Swaziland, South Africa

Exhibition of Stone Implements from Swaziland, South AfricaAuthor(s): T. Rupert JonesSource: The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 28,No. 1/2 (1899), pp. 48-54Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and IrelandStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2842931 .

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( 48 )

APRIL 26T11, 1898.

F. W. RUDLER, Esq., F.G.S., President, in the Chair.

The Minutes of the last Meeting were read and signed.

Professor RUPERT JONES exhibited and explained a collection of stone implements from Swaziland. Discussion was carried on by Mr. NICOL BROWN and by Mr. A. L. LEWIS, who remarked that the difference between paleolithic and neolithic implements was one of age rather than of shape, and reminded the members that the existence of a palaeolithic age in Egypt had first been demnon- strated by their former President, General Pitt-Riivers, in 1881.

Th1e PRESIDENT called attention to a very curious collection of flints from the Oranige Free State, which had been lent to the Institute by Mr. W. H. PENNING, and which were described by Professor RUPERT JONES.

Dr. GARSON then gave a short sketch of two papers oti African Crania, by Mr. FRANK C. SHRUBSALL.

The thanks of the Meeting were accorded to Professor Rupert Jones,, Mr. Penninig, Mr. Shrubsall, anid Dr. Garson.

EXHIBITION OF STONE IMPLEMENTS FROM SWAZILAND, SOUTH AFRICA.

BY PROFESSOR T. RUPERT JONES, F.R.S., Hon. Memb. Anthropol. Inst., etc.

[WITH PLATES III AND IV.]

THis fine series of large stone implements was sent to England by Mr. Sidney Iyan, having been found by him niear Darkton, in the tin-bearing gravels of the M'Babaan or Embabaan River, West Swaziland, South Africa. There are thirteen of them. They consist of siliceous schist, black fine-grained quartzite or chert, and of quartzites composed of grit and breccia of quartz, lydite, and jasper; and there is one smaller implement of crystalline quartz. The large forms vary in length from 41 by 31 inches to 8 by 41 inches, and weigh from 131 ozs. up to 2 lbs. 71 ozs. The sharp-oval shape, that is oval with each end sharp, is not commnon amongst them. They are mostly of a long-ovate shape, sharper at one end than at the other, like the tonaue-shaped flint implements, of large size, not infrequently found in England and France, such as those mneasuring 71 by 31 inches (Amiens), arid 7 by 31 inches (Bedford), and 61 by 3- inches (11eculver), as figured by Prestwich (Phil. Trans., 1860, P1. 13, Fig. 5), and Evans (Archceologia), vol. 39 (1862) (Pl. 2, Fig. 1, and Pl. 3, Fig. 1), and one from Devonshire 7i by 31 iniches (Ancient Stone 1J7mplements, 1872, p. 539).



PROF. T. RUPERT JONES.-EXhibition of Stone Imyplements. 49

Size.

Weight.

Length. Width.

Inches. Inches. lbs. ozs.

8 by 4 | 2 5 Grey quartzitic grit-stone; obscurely laminated, and some- what mylonized.

71, 31t 1 6i Black qiqartz-schist, or schistore lydite; stained outside ochreous.

7 ,, 2 5 Black quartzite, with obscure lamination; ridges worn down on both faces. Notched on each side near the narrow end.

7 ,, 4 | 1 6j Black fiiie-grained quartzite, or lydite. (Figured specimen.)

7 ,, 4 1 13 Grey fine-grained quartzite, with white quartz veins; "Blue

bar rock."

t,, 4 1 13 Black quartz-sclhist, or fine-grained quartzite, with quartz veins.

6i,, 4 2 71 Black coarse-grained quartzite, obscurely mylonized.

6g ,, 3f 1 Oi Grey quartzitic grit, mylonized.

6 ,, 4 1 12 Black qiuartzitic breccia. Wide near the butt-end,

6 ,, 3 11 01 Grey quartzitic grit-stone.

(fragment) 14 Black quartzite of not very fine grain. Broken.

41 by 3f 131 Black quartzitic breccia; water-worn.

3f , 24 31 Vein-quartz.

Some few show a partially crushed or beaten edge at one endl, usually the thick end or butt. How they were used, ancl indeedl for what purposes they were fabricated, it is difficuilt to say. Possibly (1) they m-ay have been held in the hand (with or without a cover of skin and hair, or vegetable leaves aiid fibre), and either the thick enid used for hammerinig or for breaking other stones, or the sharper end used for digging in the soil; one thin-edged, all round illay have been useful in flaying or skinning animals; or (2) they mlay have had a flexible stick, or, better, a pair of such sticks, benit across tlle middle (as work-men lhold a chisel solmietimes in coopering, or indenitino hot iron, etc.); and then it could be wielded with advantage either in wvar or in peacefiil work. The thin edge, however, rarely shows any trace of use or wear; (3) possibly a club or large piece of wood may have had a hole inade in it for the reception of one end or other of the implement, and when fastenied in used as the local requirememits suggested. If we knew nmole of the local requiremenits we could all tlle better hazard conjectures as to the probable adaptations of these implemiienlts to useful pUrposes.

NEW SERIRS, VOL I, Nos. 1 AND 2. E



50 Pl'OF. T. PIMPERT JoNsES.-EBz7hbition of

It is not at present possible to assigni any special chronological age to these African implements, for the relative age of the gravels in which they are found has lnot boeen worked out by geologists. All that we now know is that somiie of the gravel lies on the hillside above the River Einbabaan, and some of it derived from those higher gravels, in the river-bed. Therefore sufficient time must be allowed for the river to have lowered its level in the valley, leaving in succession one or more fringes of the gravel that it had formed and. already deposited in its course; and if not making more of such detritus, at least receiving such of the older debris as may fall or be washed down by rains and freshets.

The shape of these implements is similar in general features to many other large examples of tools or weapons of stone, found elsewhere in the world, as, for instance, in India, Somaliland, 100 N. (in North-East Africa, some 2,000 miles and more north of Swaziland 260 S.), as well as in France and Englanid.

In the last-named countries stone implements of this shape and size are associated with certain gravels, the relative age of which has been calculated by Prestwich, oni very good philosophical grounds, as being at least 20,000 years old.' The old roughly-chipped implements have been, with reason, regarded as older thani others, which are more neatly chipped into shape, and in many cases ground to a smootli surface and sharp edge, found in various deposits, caves, and burial imounicds of much later age, coming down from prehistoric to historic times. The latter tools are well known as " Neoliths," and the former as " Palaeoliths." There are, however, instances of forms more or less like the older type occurrilng with those of later make and patterns; possibly because, in dressing the flints, the making of the rough types would necessarily result on the hands of many of the fabricators before the shape and fashion of the intended " neolith " would be arrived at. Moreover a taste for that fashion might have either " come up again " (as fashions do nowadays), or some lhereditary feeling (long drawn out as some suppose the interval would make it) transmiitted from older families.

That the agreement in form of these large foreigni examples from Africa with the European examples go to prove them to be wlhat is intended by the term ' aheolithic " mllay be taken for granted. They may be (and indeed, as indicated above, some in the higher river-gravels, must be) of great antiquity, andl necessarily must have belonged to a race of men long anterior to modern, and even neolithic times; and they may have been of the first tribe to inhabit the particular locality; but that they were a primaeval race is not only not proved, but very nllikely. Primeval mblan lwas lnever inspired to do more than he had practically learnied to do in any lmatter. Experience had led him onwards slowly, from the use of natural fragments of stone, in the art of dressing stone implements, first to the roughly chipped, then to the neatly dressed, and ultimately the evenly ground stone weapon and tool.2 These great rough tongue-shaped implements show the result of an evolution of manufacturing ingenuity, just as

I See T. R. Jones's Lecture on the Antiquit/I of Man, 1877, p. 30. 2 Lecture om the Al,tiquity of Alan, ). 451.



Stone Ilplements fromn S?vaciiland, South Afrirca. 51

muich practically as in successive kinds of kniives, forks, steel pens aiid shot gulls. There are some stone implements older even than these " palcoliths." They are called " Eoliths."

Then, on the other hand, the simplest form of stone implement, namely, a flake, may or may lnot be counted on for indicating, a relative age. They must have beeni made wherever a chipping place existed, whether in new or old times. Therefore by themselves they do not prove anything as to age.

From the Embabaan Mr. Sidney Ryan has sent several flakes of a stone similar to that of some of the implements, therefore probably clhippedl off by the same old people who made the latter; but they may have been the refuse of later workings. Local details are required, andl Mr. Ryani will endleavouir to supply IIs with more local information.

Sonie of the large implements bear evidence of water-action, or perhaps of blown sand, in the smoothness of their former ridges. Whethel this was effected in the present stream or before the dressed stones were left in the gravel, is of course doubtful, though probably attributable to wear and tear in the presenlt river.

With regard to the distribution of stone implemiients in the gravels of valleys, various hypotheses have been propounded. They may have been dropped into the waters of lakes, river-reaches, and river-mouths, from canoes, andl fromi holes in the winter ice; or they may have been washed in by land-floods from ,stations on shore, or possibly they may have been derived from old kitchen-mididiiigs oln the shores of estuaries destroyed by violent stormiis, or by earthquake-waves or other cataclysms due to land-movements.

As already intimated, it is difficult to assign exactly the uses to which the aborigines put the stone implements foulnd in the gravels. Prestwich, Evans, Lubbock, E. B. Tylor andl many others have suggested all the possible uses that a civilized mani, restorilng in imagilnation the conditions of those old times, can think of; and douLibtlessly they have hit upon many of the methods of their use, and the purposes to which they were applied.i

We need not doubt that priniameval man utilized such pieces of stone as were at hand, whether broken up by frost or other means, and suited his requirements. ' Probably, at first, with little or no alteration of their form; but afterwards he applied them with infinite modification of their shapes to meet his wants in killing, skinning, cutting, fire-making, rubbing, pounding, scraping, drilling, knocking, breaking, chipping, digging, etc.," that is, as tools and instruments in many processes, as well as weapons of offence and defence in fighting with man and beast.

Mr. Ryan discovered at one spot in the neighbouring hills a place where the natives had at some past time manufactured such implements. But the descriptive details have not yet come to hand.

l See also the descriptions of Plates A, I to XLII, in the Reliquice Aquitanicce, 1865-75. E 2



52 PROF. T. PRUPERT JONES.-ExhibitWo of

Mr. Ryan, has, however, very thoughtfully and effectively collected many rock-specimens froiii the mountain "Ingwenya" near by, anid among them we finid (as he expected) some at least of the same kind of rocks as those of wlich the implements consist. This is particularly the case witlh a dense siliceous rock made up of grit an(d larger fragments (being a breccia). This grit-stone is seen to be obscurely lamiiinated in the imiiplem-ients, and in one case it shows that in the original rock-mnass it has beeni suibjected to a violent squeeze, under lateral pressure, which, (loul)tless witlh the aid of water and heat, softened it so as to have forced its particles inito longi streaky lines, as if they had been in(ler the influence of a great rolling mill, lhence this kind of rock is said to have been milled (technically "iiylonized").

Of other stoine implements, somiie from Solmialilaiid in Africa, alre here exhibited by Mr. H. W. Seton-Karr, now absent from home, and he has asked me to speak of them.'

They conisist of quartzite and chert. Mr. H. W. Seton--Karr's notices of hiis discovery of large stone implemlents2

in Soimialilani-d are given in the Journal Anthropoloyical Institute, vol. xxv, No. 3, February, 1896, pp. 271-275, Plates XIX and XXI; anid vol. xxvi, No. 1, Auigust, 1897, pp. 93-95. He founid themii on the western face of a low hill, on the right bank of the Issutugani, at onie spot, 200 feet above the present lIvel of the river. This is apparently a position analogous to that of some of the Embabaan gravel. One specimeni was 7 by 4 inches, as shown in Plate XIX; others lhe refers to as being 6 and 8 inches in lenigtlh, and two and three pounds in wei(yht.

Somne other stonie imiiplemiients from Souitlh Africa have been lent to me by Mr. Nicol Brown, F.G.S. Somle fromi Swaziland (collected by Mr. Leith), nlot so largc as Mr. I'yan's, but mlore varied in slhape, some having, a l)roadl chisel-shaped enid. Otlhers (collected 1 y Mr. Leith) are froml the neighbourhood of Pretoria in the Tnuisvaal and, thoujgh smiiall and(t very different indcleedI in otlher respects fromi tbe great imlpleiiienits of Somnaliland and Swaziland, these are lnot only wortlhy of careful considertation, bjut lea(l uis to tluink of some simnilar specimens (with concave ami(I booked edges) occurring in consideralole numiber,es ini our own-l couiintry.

Of these it may lie sai(d tbat to some eyes they appear to be simiple gravel stones with nothing of imiterest in themii; to otlhers, loNvever, they are gravel stones wvliell hcave bee lhandledc, preparel, and uise(d by somle early race of miieni, whose

I Very careful an(d effective water-colouir sketches of larger implements, suich as Mr. Seton- Karr has previously laid before this Institute, were exhibite(l.

2 III the l'roc. Royal Soc., vol. lx, No. 359, September, 1896, pp. 19-21, Sir John Evalns supplied some valuable remarks oni these inlteresting specimiienis, both large and small, some of flint anid sonme of quartzite, fromii Somalilaiid, poiniting out that they are "Palaolithic " forms, suich as occur in Egypt at several hundred feet above the valley of the Nile, Northern Africa, Spaini, Cenitral Italy, Franice, and Elnglaiid; and that " this discovery aids in bridginig over the interval between Palnolithic manl in Britain and in India; . . . and tends to prove the unity of race betweeni the inlhabitants of Asia, Africa, anid Europe in Palaolithic times,"



Stonte I4)legbents f?soml Swvaziland, Soatd Africa. 53

local habitationi has been remiioved from the sulface of the lanid. These deeply interesting and almiost miiysterious imiiplements occur in hlundrecls, to those wvho properly look for tllem, oni the chalk plateau of a part of the Nortlh Downs in Kent, and therefore have been called " Plateau Implemenits," rightly enough, bult the men who madle themii are wrongly called " Plateau Men." They d(ld lot live there, but high up on the hill-range or mountain, 2,000 feet high, wlhere nlow the lowly hills of the Wealden area, reduced by subsidence of the lanld, aand by the action of water and ice, rise to abouit 800 feet.

It was to the acuteness and perseverance of Mr. B. Harrisoni, of Iglithtln, tlat these plateau implemiients were discovered and gathered in numbers ; and to the scientific acumen and geological knowledge of the late Sir Joseph Prestwicll thlat their meaning, status, andl place of origin were determinied. On account of their having been imnbedded in a ferruginous gravel, whiclh is foulnd by digging, to be 8 feet from the surface (and(I of course here and there from tilmie to time (listurbed and brought to the top), they are stained with a dark ochreous tint, andl have got the name of the " ol( brownlies." The palheoliths that ale in the valley-gravels of the district must, like those valleys anid their gravels, be of later age than the plateau gravel; and this must have been (terived froml some landl of chalk and flint at a higher level. Tllere is none now; buit when the Weald carried on its dome mlany strata of chalk, between 2,000 ald 3,000 feet high (and the Ardennes had at that tilmie a height of about 18,000 feet, owing to the same elevatory causes), tlhere was area enoughl anid sufficient causes for a gravel to be formed on

that chalk. This ultimately came down by the rivers anid iloods, al(l otlher natural methods, until it rested at the base of time old hills, oln the imiore level area which is now the Clhalk Plateau of the Downs. This has beeni iiiodified by weather, and was cut off froii the renmaining uplandls of the oince lofty range by two parallel intervening valleys, excavated in the Glacial Period.'

That there are, even in gravel-walks, small fliilts of analogous shape, but by no means idenitical with those in the plateau-gravel, is quite true, alid solilec

approach to their peculiar shapes may occasionally be seen elsewhere, but time "Eoliths" are distinct. Doubtless frost (as suggested by Mr. W. Cunningtoll) in

I The relative chronology will be settled when that of the highest elevation of the Weald, and that of the subsequenit excavation of the valleys between the Weald and the Dowlns, shall have been determined. The as yet unsettled age of the Glacial Period itself is, of course, involved in this consideration. Some are still surprised at this bold theory, advaniced and supported by my old frienid Sir Joseph Prestwich. The probably great chalnges of climate, due to rearrangements of lalnd and water and of high and low ground, form part of his interestinlg history of the Wealden hill-ranges, in the sculpturing of which not olnly aqueous, but glacial, agency must have had a large share. The veteran geologist elaborated his views on the subject of the Pliocene Tertiaries and gravels lying on the flanks of the diminishirng island of the Weald in his continuous observations from 1847 to 1890; and he allowed me to give an abstract of them, made under his supervision, to the British Association in 1894; it was published in Natural Science, vol. v, No. 32, October, 1894, pp. 269-275. For Sir Joseph Prestwich's Memoir, "On the Primitive Characters of the Flint Implemelnts of the Chalk Plateau of Kent,' etc., see Journ. Anthrop. Inst., vol. xxi (1892), pp. 246, etc. Other papers on the subject are inieluded in Mr. A. S. Kennard's bibliographic list, Natural Science, January, 1898, p. 34.



54 W. H. PENNING.-Exhibition of Stowe imple)a)emts frant South Africa.

splittinig flints can form miiore or less parallel-sided flakes, often concave anid thin on one edge, anid convex and thick on the other, and that the thin edge may be readily modified by natural and accidental causes; but the hooked and hollow- curved plateau implemenits have the concave eclge thick, andl intentionally chippecl and hammered. The local association of " Paleoliths " with the others (knownl as "Eoliths" ancl "old brownies") in the plateau-gravel shows that aincient miani varied his work; and the fact that " Paheoliths " occur elsewhere without the " Eoliths " does not prove that the two patterns had never been made at the same timle. The several well-known orderly series of plateau implements now in museumls, showing nlunmbers of defillite patterns, are sufficient evidence of intention and design oln the part of early man. There are inally of both odd-shaped anid regular-shaped formns, of which the intended uses are ambiguous for us wlho know so little of savage life; their lhaimmelred edges, however, are lnot of accidenltal but of ilntentional origin.

Ex?planatiom of Plates III ttnd IV.

Plate I11. Side-face of a large stone implement from Swazilaind. Black siliceous rock (lydite), with very

delicate, white, cavernous veinis. Natural size.

Plate 1V. Fig. l. --The same implement, seen edge-wise: left-hand side of Plate III. Natural size. Fig. 2.-Tlie samiie implement. Edge-view on right-hand side of Plate III. NatuLral size.

EXHIBITION OF STONE IMPLEMENTS FROM SOUTH AFRICA. By W. H. PENNING, F.G.S.

TIIE collection exhibited by Mr. Pennilng included some implements in quartzite from the Transvaal, and one obtained from the bottom of a hole for water, sunk through 4 or 5 feet of limestone at the foot of Ooquaan Hill in the Kalihari Desert. Most of the objects, however, were rudely worked stones picked up on the diamond-bearilng ground at tlle mines of Jagersfontein and Koffyfontein, in the Orange Free State, or obtained from the diamond-bearing gravels of the Vaal River, near Klipdrift, in Griqualaind West. From the peculiar distribution of such objects Mr. Penning was led to suggest that they may have beeln used by a primitive or prelhistoric people in search of diamonds.



Journal of the Anthropo7ogical In4titute (N.S.), Vol. I, Plate IlI.

STONE IMPLEMENT, SWAZILAND.



Journal of the Anthrqpo7Qqical Institute (N.S.), r-ol. I, Plate IV.

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Exhibition of Stone Implements from Swaziland, South Africa