702 STONE AGE BASIS FOR ORIENTAL STUDY. 



It is to the wide foundation platform of Oriental culture that my remarks 

 to-day specially refer, not from any over-estimation of the importance of 

 this basis, as compared with the higher stages, but because these latter 

 have, with the aid of historical record, become more familiar to the 

 studious world; while as to the lowest and widest Oriental culture 

 level, I have even some new evidence to offer. 



The former i^resence of races of low culture in countries where none 

 now remain is more than by any other symptom proved by the presence 

 in the ground of stone implements and other objects characteristic of 

 low culture amonj^ modern savages and barbarians, and doubtless also 

 characteristic in the remote past. Thus tlie Stone Age is practically 

 identified with the savage and low barbaric periods. Moreover, the 

 usual division of the Stone Ago into the later and higher Xeolithic or 

 ground stone i)eriod, and the earlier and lower Paleolithic or chipped 

 stone period, the evidence for which has been thoroughly threshed out, 

 may here be taken for granted. As to the Paleolithic period, discov- 

 eries of the last generation have established the presence of tribes of 

 men over a large part of Europe whose high antiquity is shown by the 

 geological i^osition in which their relics are found in Quaternary gravel- 

 beds and caves, and by their association with that extinct fauna which 

 gives their age the concise name of the Mammoth period. That.their 

 stage of culture was that of savage hunters and fishers is obvious from 

 the rude stone implements themselves, and from other objects of more 

 or less Eskimo tyi)e, while at the same time, carvings and scratched 

 outlines of animals show an extraordinary sense of art. It has been 

 proved also that the rude tribes, whose existence was argued from their 

 rudely chipped stone instruments, Avere not confined to Europe. Let 

 us notice their few but important occurrences within our Oriental area. 



Egypt, it is important to notice, has yielded imi)]ements of well- 

 marked Paleolithic type, a solid basis for its history of culture. They 

 may be traced on into Syria, while the laterite l)eds of South India, 

 by their similar quartzite implenu'nts, testify to the former habitation 

 of the Peninsula by tribes there representing the primitive savage life. 

 In Siberia, where the remains of the nuimmoth have been preserved so 

 perfectly, I should think that the weapons of coeval man might prob- 

 ably be found in corresponding quantity, but, so far as I know, no 

 thorough quest for them has yet been made.. 



At the farthest extreme of our Oriental boundary in Tasmania 

 stone implements which njust be classed as low Paleolithic in type 

 appear. So remarkable are the characters of these implements and the 

 circumstances of theiroccurrence, that as they are very scarce in Europe 

 I have j)laced on the table all the specimens I have been as yet able to 

 obtain. The point I have to draw attention to is that though of rude- 

 ness beyond that of the remotest ages known, they remain in use into 

 our own time. It is now more than thirty years since my attention was 

 aroused by seeing a stone implement from Tasmania in the museum of 



