336 KANSAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



to modification. Doubtless some peoples in primitive times ( as the 

 Eskimos do down to our own day ) depended entirely upon the re- 

 sources of the animal world for their weapons, tools, and utensils, as 

 well as for food and clothing. Indeed, this is more than probable, for 

 very early man, in Glacial times, was a creature of the cold. Without 

 animal resources, in cold climates life would be impossible, as with the 

 Eskimos before the advent of the Europeans. 



Thus it was that from her stores of varied resources nature pre- 

 sented primeval man such things ready to his hand as were most es- 

 sential to the maintenance of life in his first struggle for existence as 

 he emerged from the animal stage. As Chas. Morris says, in "Man 

 and his Ancestor": "Whenever primitive man began to add to his 

 natural powers those of surrounding nature by the use of artificial 

 weapons, the first step in the new and illimitable range of evolution 

 was taken. A crude and simple use of weapons gave him in time su- 

 premacy over lower animals, and an advanced use of tools and weap- 

 ons has given him supremacy over nature herself." 



The first long, long chapter in the history of human effort and prog- 

 ress is written in stone. Our knowledge of these earlier phases of 

 human activity would be very meager, save that the ruder peoples of 

 to-day are found practicing similar forms of art. Dr. C. C. Abbot, in 

 his "Primitive Industry," says: "The use of a water- worn pebble as 

 a hammer simply held in the hand, was among the first acts of primi- 

 tive man." But as Tylor says: "Mere natural stones picked up and 

 used without any shaping at all, are implements of a very low order. 

 Such natural tools are often found yet in use, being for the most part 

 slabs, water-worn pebbles and other stones used for hammer and anvil. 

 In ancient shell heaps such stones are found which were used to crush 

 shells." 



As regards the use of unmodified stone — which the older writers 

 believed that no tribe ever did exclusively — no better example of 

 such low culture can be found in illustration of our studies in the 

 first achievements of primitive man than the Seri Indians, of the 

 island of Tiburon and the adjoining coast of Sonora, in the Gulf of 

 California. Prof. W. J. Magee, of the Bureau of Ethnology, spent 

 two years in the study of these low people, and his wonderful descrip- 

 tion of them is found in the seventeenth report of the bureau. 

 They are, in many respects, as low or lower than the Australians or 

 Tasmanians. He says : "Perhaps the most conspicuous general fact 

 in connection with Seri tools and their uses is the prevalence of 

 natural objects employed. After the mandibles of birds and the 

 spines and bones of fishes, came the thorns of cacti and mimosa, and 

 the bones and teeth of mammals. Two conspicuous classes were ma- 



