Kenneth P. Oakley

Fire as Palaeolithic Tool and Weapon

A number of recent discoveries have focused attention on questions relating to when and for what primary purposes fire was first used. The claim made in 1947 by Professor Raymond Dart (1952) that Australopithecus was a fire-user has been re-examined, but without confirmation. Briefly the relevant evidence is as follows. In 1925 Professor Dart received pieces of bone breccia which had been collected by Mr W. I. Eitzman at limeworks in the Makapansgat Valley near Potgietersrust in the Central Transvaal. As some of the fragments of bone had a charred appearance Professor Dart suspected that the breccia was a cave deposit containing hearths of early man. He submitted some of the blackened fragments for analysis to Dr J. Moir of the Government Chemical Laboratory, and to Dr F. W. Fox of the South African Institute for Medical Research. They found that when the material was dissolved in acid there was a residue of black particles which could be transformed into carbon dioxide. This was proof that the blackness of the bone fragments was due to free carbon, and in the circumstances it was naturally held to indicate that the bones were charred (Dart, 1925).

The Kanam Jaw

SINCE Dr. and Mrs. L. S. B. Leakey discovered that the Oldowan pebble tool-maker in Tanganyika was an Australopithecine (Zinjanthropus boisei)1, I have been frequently asked whether this development has any bearing on the unsolved problem of the Kanam mandible which was recovered by Dr. Leakey in 1932 from deposits in Kenya apparently at the same cultural horizon as the newly discovered Olduvai skull. The Kanam mandible was referred to Homo kanamensis sp. nov.2 and is preserved in the British Museum (Natural History).

Tools Makyth Man

Benjamin Franklin appears to have been the first to call Man the ‘tool-making animal’ while Thomas Carlyle in Sartor Resartus (1833)declared : ‘Without tools he is nothing.’ In pre-Darwinian days the definition of Man was no more than philosophical exercise. That Man might have evolved from lower animals was in the minds of very few people in those days. Certainly the question of how to draw a boundary between pre-human and human had not yet become a practical issue. Even the conception that Man had a long unrecorded past had barely taken root a hundred years ago, although the seeds of the idea had been sown by a few men far ahead of their time, such as Isaac de la Peyrere, who published a book in Pans in 1655 on Primi Nomines ante Adamum , and John Frere whose discovery of flint tools in brickearths at Home in Suffolk led him to infer in 1797 that they had been ‘ used by a people who had not the use of metals ’, and ‘ belonged to a very ancient period indeed, even before that of the present world ’.

The Earliest Fire-makers

Flying across Africa to attend the Pan-African Congress on Prehistory in Livingstone in July of last year I was frequently reminded of how characteristic of man is his continual use of fire, not only in cities but in the primitive open spaces. There were few moments in the course of the whole journey when signs of fire or artificial light were not somewhere visible. As we passed over the sparsely inhabited bush and savannah country of south-central Africa one could sometimes count up to a dozen columns of smoke rising from the landscape spread out below. Some of these were deliberate bush-fires which the native farmers start early in the dry season as a safeguard against the disastrous spread of uncontrolled fire at the end of that season when the vegetation is like tinder. At the Livingstone Congress there were several communications bearing directly or indirectly on the question of how long has man, particularly in Africa, had fire at his disposal.

Dating Skeletal Material

A nitrogen test has become ancillary to radiocarbon dating.

A reconsideration of the date of the Kanam jaw

Abstract In March 1932, during Dr L. S. B. Leakeys expedition to the southern shore of the Kavirondo Gulf of Victoria Nyanza, part of a fossil human mandible was discovered by Juma Gitau in an erosion gully in the early Pleistocene Kanam Beds at Kanam West. Since the Kanam jaw showed a well-defined chin, generally regarded as signifying Homo sapiens, it was for long placed in a “suspense account” and repeatedly doubts have been expressed as to whether it really did come out of the Kanam Beds. The composition of the jaw was tested at a number of points, both the bone (corpus mandibulae) and the dentine of the teeth and comparison made with analyses of mammal bones and teeth from the Kanam Beds at Kanam West. For convenience the results may be summarized as follows.

Folklore of Fossils Part II

There are several kinds of fossil sea-urchin that are the subject of folklore, the commonest in the south of England being casts in flint, derived from the Chalk, of the heart-urchin Micraster , and of the helmet-urchin Echinocorys . Both of these, but more commonly the latter, are known to the country people as shepherds crowns or fairy loaves (PL. xxi b ). Formerly at least, the Essex labourer believed that so long as one of these fossil sea-urchins was kept in the house, his family would never go short of bread (Johnson 1908, 149). At a number of localities in southern England fossil echinoids are traditionally placed on dairy shelves to keep milk from going sour. This practice is clearly linked with the ancient idea that these fossils are thunderstones. The earliest known case of fossil echinoids being used in a ceremonial burial is in the Early Bronze Age tumulus on the Dunstable Downs, where nearly IOO shepherd’s crowns, mainly Micraster , had been arranged to encircle the bodies of a woman and child (Worthington Smith 1894, frontispiece, 337-8). H. S. Toms collected evidence that up to the middle of the last century fossil sea-urchins were called thunderstones throughout Sussex, whereas they are now simply regarded as ‘lucky’ (PL. XXII b ), and if seen in the soil and not brought home, at least one should spit on the shepherd’s crown and throw it over the left shoulder. Even the idea of luck being attached to sea-urchins found on the fields has disappeared latterly from many villages. As there were still scattered traces of the thunderstone belief in Sussex in 1930, it is probable that more than a century ago the thunderstone aspect was dominant there. This idea survived longer in West Sussex than in East Sussex, and oral tradition can be traced back to 1860.

The organic content of Recent rhyolitic ashes in Malaya

The remains, chiefly fresh-water diatoms and opaline rods believed to be plant structures, do not include sponge spicules, signs of marine deposition. Small opal spicules found may be inorganic, or casts of vegetable material.

An Ordovician Species of Chaetetes

THE fossil material collected from the Ordovician limestones of Akpatok Island, N.W.T., by Mr. Ian Cox during the Oxford Hudson Straits Expedition in 1931, included a specimen whose affinities could not be determined from a superficial examination. In asking me to report on the Polyzoa from these rocks, Mr. Cox suggested that I might also investigate this doubtful form, since it resembled in many respects certain massive Polyzoa. Critical examination by means of thin sections has shown, however, that it is not a Polyzoan but a Tabulate Coral referable to the genus Chaetetes .

RELATIVE DATING OF ARLINGTON SPRINGS MAN.

Relative dating tests confirm the antiquity of the Arlington Springs human femur.