THE OLD STONE AGE 
ceedingly difficult to make. Witness the swift degeneracy 
and partial extinction of our Plains Indian tribes, due in 
no small measure to the extermination of the vast herds 
of bisons or “‘buffaloes,” upon which they had been wont 
to depend. 
We have come now to the end of the Old Stone Age in 
Europe. Its story outside of Europe is still a very dis- 
connected one, rendered more difficult of interpretation, 
perhaps, by the absence in the warmer portions of the 
globe of the great time-scale of the Ice Age, with its alter- 
nating colder and warmer periods. 
In discussing epochs subsequent to the Old Stone Age 
the mass of material forces us to lay greater stress on 
topical than on regional or racial studies, a course per- 
missible in an attempt to describe the processes by which 
civilization has been attained. 
[ 233 | 
