78 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. X. 



the last landmark in the long migration history of the Colarians. 

 There are reasons to believe that in still earlier times, chronologically 

 not definable, the Colarian-Mon stock when it formed a coherent 

 unbroken ethnic body must have lived along the southern ranges of the 

 eastern Himalaya, extending into the territories of Bengal and Assam. 

 In Tibetan literature and even in the modern Tibetan colloquial lan- 

 guage, the word Mon still appears as a generic designation for all non- 

 Tibetan tribes living southward of the Himalaya and is particularly 

 used in composition with the names of those kinds of cereals and 

 pulse early received by the Tibetans from India. 1 Consequently, 

 the Tibetan name Mon originally referred to the Mon tribes, and to 

 those exclusively; while, at a later period, after a disintegration of 

 this group resulting in a migration of the Mon southward into Farther 

 India and of the Colarians into a southwesterly direction, this name 

 was retained by the Tibetans and transferred to new-coming tribes 

 occupying the place of the former emigrants, and then to Northern 

 India in a generalized way. In view of such historical events, to come 

 back to our proposition above, it is quite conceivable that Mon 

 or Colarians, or both as a prehistoric undivided unit, once covered 

 also the territory of the Naga and left there these peculiar stone celts 

 which could have subsequently given the incentive for their imitation 

 in iron. The Colarians preserved them faithfully, until they reached 

 their new home where they gradually dropped into oblivion, as they 

 received iron from their more cultivated neighbors. This consideration 

 is also apt to prove that the spade-shaped stone celt must be of con- 

 siderable antiquity, as also indicated by the extent of the area over 

 which it has been found. It has been a long-lived implement, too, 

 and seems to have still been in actual use during the bronze age. J. 

 Deniker (The Races of Man, p. 364, New York, 1906) figures one 

 polished spade-shaped celt excavated with several others in Cambodja, 

 side by side with objects of bronze. 2 



All the tribes among which this spade has been found once practised 

 hoe-culture and still partially practise it (see p. 48). Hence it is 

 evident that this implement was the mattock which they used for this 



1 Laufer in Memoires de la Societe finno-ougrienne, Vol. XI, pp. 94-101 (Hel- 

 singfors, 1898), where all the evidence in this question is brought together. The 

 conclusions as formed above are the same as those at which I arrived thirteen years 

 ago, and after renewed examination, I see no reason to modify them. 



2 Curiously enough, he does not refer to the corresponding types of Central India, 

 and is quite unaware of the great importance which this trifling object bears on a 

 chapter in the primeval history in Eastern Asia. His note that the Naga have still 

 at the present day axes of precisely the same form which they use as hoes deserves 

 correction, for the article of Peal to which he refers speaks of hoes made of iron in 

 a similar shape, and which are possibly, but not positively, connected with those 

 ancient stone celts. 



