Man ( sic) the skilled tool maker

and purchased by Sir Mark Collet, of St Clere, Kemsing, Kent. Four letters from Mr Basham to Collet, written in September and October 1927, and some sketches are included in the loan. Collet originally wrote to F. and H. Edwards, of London Road, Brandon, inquiring about flint crosses and the Edwardses passed his inquiry on to Mr Basham. With his reply Basham enclosed specimens of flint crosses, which 'cannot be knapped out, but are done by hand pressure, which requires great skill'. The price was not stated but was just enough to cover expenses. Basham continues: "I have also en- closed for you to see a photograph of a flint necklace made by myself. It is the only one of its kind in existence and is the work which no other man can copy. The secret I hold. This necklace is formed of solid pieces of flint with the centres taken out and it is still in my pos- session. This can be sold at a fair price. In his second letter Basham agrees to make a cross of the shape sketched by Sir Mark Collet. Referring again to the necklace he says that "it is the work of two winters' spare time and if time was counted should be worth f30, but as circumstances are now I should be glad to sell at £10, which would be very cheap for such work as I can guarantee that it is the only one of its kind in the world and that no other man can do such work. Of course each ring is separate and only joined with lead clips as I haven't the money to have it mounted properly, but it is the best piece of work that has ever been done out of flint. Basham sent a sketch suggesting the type of mounting, apparently in gold, for the necklace, but the lead clips still remain. In his last letter Basham enclosed sketches of the copies of pre- historic implements he made and included a fish-hook of the type mentioned by Rainbird Clarke. His secret, he says, he will entrust to a man working for him. D. B. KELLY CLARKE, Rainbird. 1935. The Flint-Knapping Industry at Brandon. ANTIQUITY, IX, 56. Man the Skilled Tool-maker Sir Wilfrid Le Gros Clark has said, 'Probably the differentiation of Man from ape will ulti- mately have to rest on a functional rather than an anatomical basis, the criterion of humanity being the ability to speak and to make tools' (1949, 73). Unless some reliable indication of capacity for speech can be found in cranial endocasts, the ability to make tools is the only practical criterion from the point of view of the palaeoanthropologist. I have published several essays on man as tool-maker but some important developments have occurred since I last wrote on this subject. In 1951, I said, "The chimpanzee is the only ape reliably reported to make tools, and then only in captivity.' In 1960 Miss Jane Goodall observed wild chimpanzees in the Gombe Stream Game Reserve in Tanzania making simple tools, such as trimming a blade of sword- grass and using it to "fish' in termite nests (Goodall 1964, 1967). Professor W. Köhler, who observed chimpanzees making tools in captivity, obtained no clear indication that apes are ever capable of conceiving the usefulness of shaping an obiect for use in an imagined future eventu- ality. He inferred that apes become tool-makers only with a visible reward as incentive; but Tane Goodall's observations established that some chimpanzees have developed a tradition of collecting and modifying grass-blades and stems in readiness to "fish' in termite nests before these are actually in sight. Are we then to abandon tool-making as a criterion of humanity? If we scrutinize any evolutionary process we become aware of the fallacy of the hard-and-fast line--in other words, we require a sense of proportion. The use and making of tools are paramount in human behaviour, whereas in apes these activities are rare. I suggest that on the recorded evidence apes can be counted only as occasional tool-users, and, in the case of chimpanzees, grading into incipient tool-makers. Köhler found that the time in which the chimpanzee lives is limited in past and future. Jane Goodall has shown that it is less limited than Köhler inferred from his observations, but nevertheless, it is very limited in comparison with man whose https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/abs/man-the-skilled-toolmaker/DBE316F06EDF7FCEF45542485414967C

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Oakley