436 FEWKES: PREHISTORIC CULTURAL CENTERS 



claws long and strong, those of front and middle legs fully as long as 

 last tarsal joint. Vein Mi usually deeply bent in after origin. 



This genus is remarkable for having practically the same type of 

 female reproductive system as Glos'sina. There is only one ovariole 

 in each ovary. The ovaries mature an egg alternately; one at a time 

 being hatched, and maggot carried to third stage, in the uterus. The 

 uterus is merely the much distended utero vagina, functioning as uterus; 

 it bears no copulatory vesicles anteriorly. Puparium dirty-gray to 

 yellowish. 



Musca larvipara Portchinski'^ (syn. Musca corvinoides Schnabl & 

 Dziedz.^) evidently belongs to this genus. 



ANTHROPOLOGY. — Prehistoric cultural centers in the West 

 Indies.^ J. Walter Fewkes, Bureau of Ethnology. 



When the West Indies were discovered by Europeans the 

 inhabitants of these islands were ignorant of the metals, iron and 

 bronze, which have played such an important part in elevating 

 the condition of prehistoric man in the Old World. Stone, 

 clay, wood, bone, and shell were employed by the natives for 

 utensils and implements ; gold and copper for ceremonial purposes 

 or for personal decoration. The Precolumbian aborigines of the 

 West Indies, like those of the rest of America, were practically 

 in what Professor Hoernes has aptly called the infancy of our 

 race culture, to which the name Stone Age is commonly applied. 



This period of race history seems to have been universal; it was 

 nowhere of brief duration. Successive steps in cultural advance- 

 ment were slow and in certain localities were retarded by un- 

 favorable environmental conditions. 



It has been estimated that the Stone Age in the Old World 

 lasted from the year 100,000 to 5000 B.C." The American 

 Indian was practically in the Stone Age when he was discovered 

 at the close of the 15th century, and the inhabitants of a few of 

 the Polynesian Islands were still living in this epoch a little 

 over a century ago. There is every reason to suppose that the 



^ Bur. Ent. Comm. Sc. Minist. Agr. St. Petersburg, 8, no. 8: 13, footnote. 1910. 

 8 Die Anthomyid. 128. 1911. 



1 Published by permission of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. 

 ^ Practically another way of saying that the length of the Stone Age far ex- 

 ceeded, the age of metals . 



