Abstract
Giant Crescents: a New Stone Age Industry from South Africa.—Mr. C. van Riet Lowe describes a new stone age industry from South Africa in the Trans, of the Royal Society of South Africa, vol. 19, pt. 3. It consists of an assemblage of stone implements hitherto unrecorded from Mazeppa Bay, at the mouth of the Kogha River, halfway between the Great Kei and Bashee rivers on the Transkeian coast of the Cape Province. The implements are all found on the surface, so that there is no actual evidence of date; but their technique suggests a late Middle [Palæolithic] Stone Age. Material, debris, technique, weathering, show that they belong to a single industry practised from Mazeppa to Algoa Bay and as far inland as the south bank of the Orange River, that is over an area of approximately 20,000 sq. miles. This is a new culture. It is a typical blade-industry, including characteristically long blade-like implements, principally more or less isoscelene (acute angled) in shape and variants of these. Associated with the points, scrapers, and gravers, and by far the most characteristic and interesting product of the industry, is a type of implement only one of which had hitherto been found and recorded in the Union. It is an implement shaped like the quarter of an orange. The flat surfaces meet to form a more or less straight cutting-edge, and there is a strongly curved upper surface away from the cutting edge, coarsely flaked and retaining a portion of the original surface untouched in the middle. The implement may be regarded as a giant crescent. The specimen originally described came from the Kasougu River and was unassociated; but similar and finer specimens are now associated with a definite industry, the present collection coming from Mazeppa Bay. The average size for five specimens is 9.65 cm. by 3.35 cm. by 1.73 cm. Probably the industry represents a transition from the Middle to the Later [Palæolithic] Stone Age, and is an integral part of a cultural admixture from a contact between neanthropic and palaeanthropic man.
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Research Items. Nature 128, 36–38 (1931). https://doi.org/10.1038/128036a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/128036a0