24 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHISTOLOGY [bull. 60 



ings), an Amazon is also represented with a similar axe. II is called "Amazon 

 axe." Xenophon mentions it in the "Anabasis," iv, 4; and Horace speaks of 

 "Amazonia secvris " in the Odes, iv, 4, 20.' 



The American homologue certainly had no other than sacred and 

 ceremonial functions. It may not be amiss, then, to stiggest that pos- 

 sibly in prehistoric times examples of this type of implement were 

 carried by some voyager across the intervening seas and that being 

 regarded by the natives as possessed of supernatural attributes these 

 were adopted as ''great medicine," spreading to many tribes and tak- 

 ing a Avide range of form. It does not appear an entire impossibility 

 that a stone or bronze perforated ax of this type left by one of the 

 Ericsson ships should have been the " ancestor " of these peculiar 

 objects. Who will venture to say that these greatly varied, beauti- 

 fully finished, and widely distributed objects may not have come 

 into existence among the tribes during the GiiO years separating the 

 discovery of Vineland and the arrival of the English Pilgrims. 

 This suggestion may not be worth}^ of serious consideration, since 

 it is always preferable in such cases to seek origins near home. Dr. 

 Gordon^ may well be right in his suggestion that the banner stone 

 had its origin in northern America where among both Indians and 

 Eskimos the whale's tail symbol was in common use, its form corre- 

 sponding closely to that of the typical banner stone. Mr. Frank 

 Gushing, a close student of such matters, is said to have advanced 

 the view that this symbol originated in the South, and it is true that 

 two-bitted stone axes are found in Honduras and perhaps elsewhere 

 in Gentral America, but connection has not been traced. 



Aijother example more noteuorthy and of trans- Atlantic, even of 

 world-encircling, analogy is observed in the northern Temj^erate 

 and Arctic regions. A highly specialized slate spear or harpoon 

 head (fig. 12), long, narrow, and bayonet-Hke, is found along with 

 prehistoric burials in Xew England and neighboring sections. 

 Nearly identical forms occur in the St. Lawrence Valley, in Green- 

 land, and along the Arctic shores at intervals as far as Alaska, and 

 again in Finland, Siberia. Japan (fig. 13), and Korea (fig. 14). 

 Objects closely resembling these slate points in shape and man- 

 ner of manufacture are not found, or rarely found, except along the 



1 " This form of axe occurs with us during the Stone Age, not only of the full size of 

 stone (pi. viii, flcrs. 17."?, 174), but also In the shape of small ornaments of amber for 

 women (pi. viii, fig. 17.3), found also in gallery-graves in West Gothland amongst other 

 ornampnts of amber. But what appears to me to be very remarkable, in an ethnological 

 point of view, is that exactly the same form of axe which was worn as an amber ornament 

 by the women in tlie North during the Stone Age was worn by Orecian women, being, 

 however, in that country made of gold. In the comedy of ' Rudens ' (the Shipwreck), by 

 Plautus, Act IV, Scene 4, vv, 112-116, it is said that the girl Palaeatra, from Athens, 

 amongst the ornaments given to her as a child by her parents, had also received such an 

 axe in miniature, of gold (' securicula anceps') inscribed witli her mother's name. This 

 coincidence is veiT difficult to account for. It appears to me to be one of those circum- 

 stances which deserve the attention of the comparative ethnographer." 



2 Oordon, The Double Axe and some other Symbols. 



