In 1906, M. Victor Commont actually made a rare find of what seems to have been a kind of workshop site, on a terrace above the Somme river in France. Here, Commont realized, flake tools appeared clearly in direct association with core-biface tools. Few prehistorians paid attention to Commont or his site, however. It was easier to believe that flake tools represented a distinct “culture” and that this “culture” was that of the Neanderthaler or paleoanthropic line, and that the core-bifaces stood for another “culture” which was that of the supposed early modern or neanthropic line. Of course, I am obviously skipping many details here. Some later sites with Neanderthal fossils do seem to have only flake tools, but other such sites have both types of tools. The flake tools which appeared _with_ the core-bifaces in the Swanscombe gravels were never made much of, although it was embarrassing for the parallel phyla people that Fontéchevade ran heavily to flake tools. All in all, the parallel phyla theory flourished because it seemed so neat and easy to understand. TRADITIONS ARE TOOL-MAKING HABITS, NOT CULTURES In case you think I simply enjoy beating a dead horse, look in any standard book on prehistory written twenty (or even ten) years ago, or in most encyclopedias. You’ll find that each of the individual tool types, of the West, at least, was supposed to represent a “culture.” The “cultures” were believed to correspond to parallel lines of human evolution. In 1937, Mr. Harper Kelley strongly re-emphasized the importance of Commont’s workshop site and the presence of flake tools with core-bifaces. Next followed Dr. Movius’ clear delineation of the chopper-chopping tool tradition of the Far East. This spoiled the nice symmetry of the flake-tool = paleoanthropic, core-biface = neanthropic equations. Then came increasing understanding of the importance of the pebble tools in Africa, and the location of several more workshop sites there, especially at Olorgesailie in Kenya. Finally came the liquidation of Piltdown and the deflation of Galley Hill’s date. So it is at last possible to picture an individual prehistoric man making a flake tool to do one job and a core-biface tool to do another. Commont showed us this picture in 1906, but few believed him. [Illustration: DISTRIBUTION OF TOOL-PREPARATION TRADITIONS Time approximately 100,000 years ago]