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‘Fossil Tradition’ in Stone Implements*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

A. Vayson de Pradenne
A. Vayson de Pradenne*
Affiliation:
École d’Anthropologie de Paris
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Extract

When one speaks of tradition, that is to say, of the transmission of human knowledge from one generation to another, one implies that there are two methods by which that transmission is effected—the spoken and the written word; thus one draws a distinction between oral and written tradition.

Nowadays written tradition alone is of importance; but one recognizes that it has gradually replaced that oral tradition which alone existed, as one supposes, in prehistoric times. We wish here to call attention to yet another mode of transmission which certainly played a part, perhaps even an important part, in the Stone Ages, and disregard of which might in certain instances seriously confuse the study of prehistoric archaeology.

Type
Research-Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 9 , Issue 33 , March 1935 , pp. 74 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1935

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References

1 We are well aware that objects of this kind have often been made in Europe by inserting authentic Brazilian polished stone axes into equally authentic Carib clubs. Monsieur Blin, the well-known collector of ethnographic specimens, used with his usual good-nature and skill to create many such unions for his colleagues. But the ethnographic fact is well established, and existed free from any possible European influence.

2 Bull. de la Soc. de Géogr. et d’Arch. de la prov. d’Oran, 1886, pp. 147, 149.Google Scholar

3 Rev. Afr. 1922, pp. 412–16.Google Scholar

4 Bull. Soc. de Géogr. et d’Arch. de la prov. d’Oran, 1927 [separatum, with separate pagination].