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VOL. XV. (2) RUDE STONE MONUMENTS OF INDIA. 119 
Bronze; and the Iron Age. The same evolutionary 
sequences of cultures prevail in India, with this exception, 
that the Neolithic Age was followed by an Age of Copper ; 
and no distinctly marked Bronze Age preceded that in 
which the use of iron was discovered. 
Stone-implements are found more or less extensively 
over the whole Peninsula, from the south districts of 
Madras along: the western coast to the Indus valley ; all 
through the central plateau of the Deccan with its sur- 
sounding ring of hills; and far to the east in Burma. They 
are found isolated at considerable depths in the Alluvium, 
and have been disinterred from beneath the sites of the 
oldest human settlements in the country. In some places, 
as in the Mirzapur District, what seems to have been 
an ancient implement-factory has been discovered. 
Here, as in other parts of the world, the ages of rough 
and polished stone overlap. As is the case in Europe, all 
implements of the neolithic period are not necessarily 
polished, and it is practically impossible to decide to which 
period many of the examples belong. The case is still 
further complicated by the fact that up to quite modern 
times some of the tribes occupying the central tract were 
in the Age of Stone; others, as is shown by the shape of 
their iron-implements, have only quite recently emerged 
from it. But at the present time the use of stone-imple- 
ments is confined to a few tribes on the very frontier 
of the Empire, those bordering Assam and Burma on the 
north-east ; and the degraded Andamanese chip bottles left 
by sailors into razors and lancets to the present day. 
While recent discoveries in France establish in the 
opinion of some authorities’ a continuity between the 
Paleolithic and Neolithic Ages, the case is different in 
1 Windle, “Remains of the Prehistoric Age in England,” p. 11: disputed by Prof 
Boyd Dawkins, “ Journal Anthropological Institute,” xxiii, 242. 
