THE MAORI’S PLACE IN HISTORY. 279 
the importance attached to it by the ancient Mexicans and 
modern Chinese being merely a survival of the ideas and 
customs of the same rude time. 
From the jade implements discovered in European tombs, 
some archeologists have concluded that the material was an 
article of commerce during the stone age. Against this it 
has been urged that a trade necessitating long sea voyages 
could not have been carried on by people in such a rude 
condition,*but we know that trade on an extensive scale 
involving long voyages was carried on round the coast of 
New Guinea and between the Polynesian islands by pecple 
unacquainted with the use of metal. Early Kuropean 
voyagers found a few articles of greenstone or jade 
amongst the natives of Eastern Polynesia, though New 
Zealand and New Caledonia are the only places in the Pacific 
where the rock occurs. ‘There is no difficulty in accounting 
for this. 
The extraordinary development of navigation and the 
backward state or entire absence of many simpler arts 
amongst the natives of Polynesia enable us to comprehend 
how the discoveries and inventions of ruder times were 
diffused. When the Hindoos invaded Java the inhabitants 
of the Eastern Archipelago had not discarded stone imple- 
ments; thus, notwithstanding their proximity to the continent, 
they must be classed with the natives of Polynesia rather 
than with the civilized nations of Asia. Without going back 
to a very remote antiquity, throughout the great region 
extending from Madagascar to the eastern limits of Poly- 
nesia, a language akin to Maori must have been spoken 
and a uniform civilization must have prevailed. ‘To find a 
parallel for this widely spread society in continental Asia 
we must go back to pre-Aryan times, when the inhabitants 
of Southern India were agriculturists and mariners—callings 
which the conquering herdsmen regarded with contempt or 
aversion. The intermingling of the inland pastoral people 
with the agriculturists of the coast could not fail to stimulate 
discovery and invention, but wherever the former became 
dominant maritime enterprise was discouraged, and the 
stream of civilization was directed overland, beasts of 
burden facilitating its expansion. The breaking up of the 
old agricultural nations explains the backward condition of 
the insular Asiatic peoples at the commencement of our era, 
when even the Japanese were unacquainted with the art of 
writing. Since their written history commenced the Japs 
