[Illustration: 008.jpg Palaeolithic Implements of the Quaternary Period.
From the desert plateau and slopes west of Thebes.]

In the smaller illustration we see some remarkable types: two scrapers
or knives with strongly marked "bulb of percussion" (the spot where the
flint-knapper struck and from which the flakes flew off), a very regular
_coup-de-poing_ which looks almost like a large arrowhead, and on the
right a much weathered and patinated scraper which must be of immemorial
age.

[Illustration: 009.jpg (right): PALAEOLITHIC IMPLEMENTS. From Man,
March, 1905.]

This came from the top plateau, not from the slopes (or subsidiary
plateaus at the head of the _wadis_), as did the great St. Acheulian
weapons. The circular object is very remarkable: it is the half of the
ring of a "morpholith "(a round flinty accretion often found in the
Theban limestone) which has been split, and the split (flat) side
carefully bevelled. Several of these interesting objects have been
found in conjunction with Palæolithic implements at Thebes. No doubt the
flints lie on the actual surface where they were made. No later water
action has swept them away and covered them with gravel, no later human
habitation has hidden them with successive deposits of soil, no gradual
deposit of dust and rubbish has buried them deep. They lie as they were
left in the far-away Palæolithic Age, and they have lain there till
taken away by the modern explorer.

But this is not the case with all the Palæolithic flints of Thebes. In
the year 1882 Maj.-Gen. Pitt-Rivers discovered Palæolithic flints in the