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mineralised. Among these I have found certain specimens that have every appearance of having been shaped by man. Such pieces are of great rarity and assume, usually, a definite pointed form which cannot well have been produced by any natural, non-human means. The ‘worked’ portions of these bones show the same deep and ancient coloration of the other parts of the specimens, and experiments which I have carried out demonstrate that, in the present mineralised state of the bones, it is not possible to shape them to the forms they have assumed. In order to produce such forms from bone I found it necessary to operate on fresh specimens, and that these, by ‘flaking’ and rubbing with a hard quartzite pebble, could be made into shapes quite comparable with those found below the Red Crag. I have little doubt, therefore, that these latter specimens have been shaped by man and represent the most ancient bone implements yet discovered.”

Bone implements, like incised bones, remain a major category of paleoanthropological evidence. For example, Mary Leakey (1971, p. 235) has reported from Olduvai Gorge in Africa: “It is probable that the majority of the broken mammalian bones found on living sites in Bed I and II at Olduvai merely represent food debris. Some may also have been further broken by carnivores after the sites were abandoned. There is, however, a relatively small number which appear to have been artificially flaked and abraded.”

Leakey (1971, p. 235) then gave the following example: “Part of an equid [horse family] first rib showing evidence of polishing and smoothing at the fractured end. . . . There is an oblique fracture of the shaft of the rib, towards the proximal end, which runs transversely from the lower to the upper margin. One edge of the fracture is abraded and smooth, showing that the bone was used after it had been broken.”

She also described a series of humeri (the bones of the upper forelimb): “A proportion of these specimens appears to represent the ends of bones in which the shafts were shattered to extract the marrow and which have been subsequently utilised, but others, including the pointed series and those split longitudinally, seem to have been expressly shaped” (M. Leakey 1971, p. 236).

Leakey qualified her apparent acceptance of these implements with only this statement: “At the time of this writing there is, as yet, no general agreement regarding the extent to which bone was worked and used in Lower and Middle Pleistocene times. It is evident that more basic research on the effect of artificial fracture and use of bone, as distinct from damage caused by natural means, is required before bone debris from early living sites can be satisfactorily interpreted” (M. Leakey 1971, p. 235).

Despite this cautionary remark, Mary Leakey’s statements about the bone implements of Olduvai Gorge seemed positive. The question is this: will scientists show the same openmindedness in the case of the sub-Crag bone tools reported by J. Reid Moir? If the answer is yes, then paleoanthropologists will have to rework their ideas about human origins to include toolmaking humans over 2 million years ago, and maybe as much as 55 million years ago, in England.

2.19 Implements from Cromer Forest Bed, England (Middle to Early Pleistocene)

J. Reid Moir (1927, pp. 49–50) also wrote of bone tool finds from the Cromer Forest Bed: “During this year (1926) Mr. J. E. Sainty found upon the beach at Overstrand a piece of heavily mineralized bone which is evidently referable to the Cromer Forest Bed. . . . the bone is of a markedly implemental form; in fact, on the surface figured and at the butt-end, it exhibits flaking and hacking, which, judging from the experiments I carried out in shaping this material, I think has been intentionally produced. . . . Sir Arthur Keith, F.R.S. [Fellow of the Royal Society], who examined the specimen, has kindly given me the following opinion upon it: ‘There can be no doubt, I think, that your implement has been fashioned out of the lower jaw of the larger whalebone whales. None of the original