1994 is an important year for Palaeolithic Scotland as it was then that the two artefacts shown above were found. They lay within 1/4 of a mile of one another on the Moss of Cruden but on completely different terrain.

Although they were found to be separated by only a small dimension in space, they are separated in time by thousands of years!

The Core, on the left, is from a valley and was found amongst weathered red granite close to an isolated cromlech where some time in the past much fluvial activity had taken place. The lithic on the right I found on the crest of the hill of Longhaven near where a ditch had been recently dug for farming reasons. The ditch revealed a brilliantly white, sandy sub terrain which marched with the Buchan flint deposits.

When the Lithic was shown to one of today’s internationally respected Archaeologists, I was advised that the groove on its flank was, more likely than not, evidence of the intention of causing a Spark by repeated striking along the groove. He also advised that it had been lying in a desert for a few hundred or so years after the groove had been made due to the fact that the obverse of the grooved face has been obviously sand blasted! (see later images).

The finding of these two lithics and the subsequent research and field effort which they engendered resulted in the discovery of the "Weewindae Hidden Soil Horizon" as predicted by Dr. E A Fitzpatrick and its evidence of Early Palaeolithic habitation in Scotland.

Reading Dr. Ken Oakley’s works and publications are inspirational. His "Man the Tool-Maker" contains a provisional but none the less brilliant and revealing chart of:- "The Cultural Traditions of Early Man".

(Dr. K.P. Oakley F.B.A provided scientifically derived evidence which exposed the myth, aka, "Piltdown Man").

These two lithics postdate material retrieved from the Hidden Soil Horizon.

The core, which has never been denied by any professional Archaeologist (except one) as being anything but a core; is pretty well certain to be, at the latest, Mousterian.

The "Sparker"? well it is certainly much older!