COLUMBIAN HISTORICAL EXPOSITION AT MADRID. 



395 



What shall we say of the stage of culture represented by unworked 

 chips on the one hand and by specimens with well-specialized edges on 

 the other without the testimony of their handles to give us a hint of their 

 use, whether as hide dressers (O. T. Mason s Aboriginal Skin Dressing), 

 wood chisels (^&quot;iblack s Southern Alaska and Northern British Columbia 

 Indians), slave killers (Ray Expedition, National Museum Eeports), 

 wedges, planes, adzes, sacrificial axes, and even u tomahawks,&quot; and to 



TRACINGS FROM ORIGINAL DRAWINGS MADE BY THE ANCIENT PEOPLE OF MEXICO AND YUCATAN. SHOW 

 ING HOW THEY MOUNTED POLISHED STONE CELTS. 



(a-) Codex Troano (Yucatan); (5) Codex Cortesianus ; (c) Codex Columbino ; (d) Codex Cortesianus (Yucatan). 



what tool shall we look for an explanation of the puzzling problem of 

 the methods of carving the elaborate metates and obsidian masks from 

 Mexico, the figurines of volcanic rock from Costa Eica, or, most won 

 derful of all, the stone collars from Porto Eico (fig. 27). While it may 

 ba admitted that any hard stone implement would carve the compara 

 tively soft monoliths of Yucatan, it is less easy, with Mr. McGuire, to 

 imagine pitted hammer stones and pointed fragments doing the work 

 in the other cases. 1 



J See &quot;The stone hammer and its various uses/ by J. D. McGuire. American 

 Anthropologist, vol. 4, No. 4, 1891. 



