ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 213 



First, with regard to the reality of the two ages of 

 Stone. The current doctrine is that there was an 

 earlier age in which men were possessed only of rude 

 implements of chipped flints, and in which they are 

 supposed to have been ignorant of pottery and of the 

 metals. This was succeeded by a later Stone age, in 

 which polished stone implements were used, and 

 which later age passed into that of Bronze. These 

 statements are of course to be taken only locally, as 

 referring to western Europe. They must also be 

 taken with some limitations, as pottery has been found 

 in at least one cave in France referred to this age ; 

 and the book of Genesis and all early history would 

 lead us to infer that the metals gold and copper at 

 least were known from the earliest times, though 

 there must have been then as in more modern days 

 extensive regions in which they were unknown. 



There appears further, as we have stated in the last ( 

 chapter, to be a twofold division of the earlier Stone ; 

 age, into that of the Mammoth with the men of large 

 stature, and that of the Keindeer with the men of small 

 stature ; and these ages were probably separated by 

 considerable physical changes. Further, the latter of 

 these periods evidently graduates into that of polished 

 stone; while the carvings in ivory and the highly 

 artificial bone implements which are traced back into 

 the older age, and the probability that the people who 

 chipped stones possessed stone or bone hammers for 

 the purpose, renders the distinction of Palaeolithic and 

 Neolithic ages far less clear than it appears to be at 



