MAN FROM THE FARTHEST PAST 
not yet learned to shape his stone implements by grinding 
and polishing. Just when and how the change from rough 
to polished stone took place, we do not yet know. Some 
have suggested that the origin of planting had something 
to do with it. Rough and heavy stone hoes are known to 
have come into existence in more than one part of the 
world. Examples from North America are almost identical 
in form with others found in China. But wherever they 
occur they have one invariable trait in common—along 
their edges, where they have repeatedly come in contact 
with the ground, they have become highly polished. Man 
may have caught the idea of polishing and grinding stone 
tools from this, for some of the earlier stone hatchets have 
the edges polished, while the rest of the surface remains 
rough and merely chipped out. 
Thus we find ourselves on the brink of the period usually 
called the Neolithic—the Age of Polished Stone. But the 
manner of making stone tools is not that which alone, or 
even mainly, distinguishes this stage of man’s progress 
above those vastly longer periods which had gone before. 
The accumulated experience of the race, gathered 
haltingly, painfully, and with almost infinite slowness, 
was beginning to bear its well-earned fruit in a thousand 
advances. 
How far, then, have we come? We began with man a 
naked, hairy savage, unarmed save for the teeth and nails 
with which nature had provided him and a certain cun- 
ning and slyness which enabled him to think just a step or 
two ahead of his most intelligent animal foes. In this 
condition he remained, with only the faintest trace of 
progress, for hundreds of thousands of years. But slowly 
his brain was developing. He was becoming more and 
more human, less hairy, less bestial of appearance, able to 
stand more nearly erect. Unconsciously and through the 
working of natural laws, he acquired the power of speech— 
of exchanging ideas with his fellow men and handing 
down by word of mouth, as well as by example, the results 
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