360 PHYSIOLOGY CHAP. 



present information does not allow any but a fragmentary and 

 partial answer. 



As an example of a method of classifying the different stages 

 of prehistoric civilisations and of the order in which they succeeded 

 one another, we may take the one drawn up by M. Verworn. It 

 is, as the author himself says, of merely relative value, since it 

 refers to a science which is still elementary, and like every such 

 classification the result of more or less arbitrary subdivisions, 

 since it refers to a succession of facts and phenomena which 

 develop slowly and gradually out of one another in a continuous 

 series. It will, moreover, give a summary of the more common 

 characteristics and of the order of the various civilisations and 

 not of their chronology, which cannot be shown in any general 

 scheme, since different stages of civilisation may exist at the same 

 time in different parts of the world. For instance, last century 

 there still existed in Tasmania a real archeolithic civilisation, and 

 at the present time there exist races in the Polynesian Archipelago 

 whose civilisation is that of the neolithic age. The indications of 

 the geological ages given in the following scheme only hold good 

 of European civilisations of which we know more. The primitive 

 stage of so-called eolithic civilisation (from the Greek ^ws dawn) 

 forms the subject of lively discussions at present. The existence 

 of this stage, which, though not geologically proved, is affirmed by 

 Rutot and Verworn, must be hypothetically granted, since we 

 cannot but suppose that stone was used in its raw state before 

 being worked in order to adapt it for use as culinary or agri- 

 cultural implements or weapons, just as is done by certain 

 monkeys in our own day, who use it sometimes, Schweinfurth 

 tells us, to crack nuts. 



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