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can be in certain cases very difficult to distinguish a pseudoeolith from a real one, just as the task of determining the difference between the closely related Cerithes and Pleurotomes is not easy to accomplish at first glance.’ If Mr. Rutot were confronted with our flints from Belle-Assise, would he judge them the work of an intelligent being, or simply curious and troubling pseudomorphs? Shown by Mr. Capitan a choice selection of our best specimens, Mr. Rutot, in the absence of information about their stratigraphic position, was willing to formulate his judgement. He considered them to be so well fashioned as to belong to the transition from the Eolithic to the Paleolithic, the Strepyan, according to his system, the primitive Chellean in French usage. According to Rutot, certain specimens ‘bear rudimentary traces of intentional work, as might be found in trial attempts.’ In others ‘the intentional work is of a much better character.’Another ‘has been utilized as a scraper, of which it has the character.’ Another long piece ‘bears on its end attempts at work, for making a dagger or piercer.’ Another is ‘a very good racloir [side scraper], very well worn from use and retouched.’ Another is ‘a very good grattoir [end scraper], equally well worn from use and retouched.’ Finally there is a very good ‘throwing stone.’ Mr. Rutot considers the morphology of the flints of Belle-Assise as characteristic of intentional work, surpassing the simple retouching of natural flakes found in eoliths, and marking the appearance of real intentional manufacture of definite tool types in the dawn of the Paleolithic. Shown the series collected by Mr. Commont, from both Belle-Assise and Picardy, Rutot gave the same diagnosis, though honestly acknowledging he had trouble with the Eocene age of such objects.”

If one accepts Breuil’s explanation that all of the specimens from BelleAssise were formed by geological pressures, as demonstrated by a few examples of crudely chipped flakes found in contact with parent blocks of flint, then, of course, Rutot comes off very badly. One can only conclude that the unwitting Belgian geologist foolishly accepted naturally flaked flints as objects of human manufacture. But, as we have shown, Breuil’s attempted explanation does not adequately account for all of the implementlike objects found in the early Eocene beds at Belle-Assise and elsewhere. Breuil (1910, p. 287) wrote: “Although parts of broken blocks of flint are frequently found still lying in close connection, this is not the rule, and one does not often find such cases, especially in the sand which is less compacted.” It would thus appear that examples of flakes lying next to their parent blocks (Figures 3.20, 3.21) were not all that numerous. Furthermore, the flakes found in contact with the parent blocks did not very closely resemble the many other specimens that Breuil called “pseudotools” (Figures 3.22, 3.23). In particular, the flakes in contact with parent blocks did not at all resemble the two Late Paleolithic type implements found at Belle-Assise (Figures 3.24, 3.25).

Therefore the assumption that all the specimens shown to Rutot were produced by natural forces is unwarranted. The presence of a few naturally broken flints at Belle-Assise does not rule out the possibility that many others, resembling implements, were in fact made by humans, especially since the latter category display more elaborate patterns of chipping than visible in the few specimens demonstrably broken by geological pressure. It is, therefore, quite possible that Rutot’s judgements about the specimens shown to him by Capitan were entirely correct, and that Breuil had inadvertently been the discoverer of a new Eolithic industry in the Eocene. Worthy of note is the fact that Rutot found signs of utilization on the edges of many of the specimens. The hypothesis that implemental shapes with signs of wear on the appropriate working edges could have been produced by blind natural forces will induce in at least some unprejudiced minds a sense of improbability.

3.4.4 The Role of