CAVE DWELLERS OP PERAK. 15 



caves, though it has been somewhat rashly taken for granted 

 that the cave dwellers were the makers of the stone implements 

 that have been so abundantly found in Perak and in the neigh- 

 bouring States. But the least reflection would serve to shew 

 that these implements indicate a much higher intelligence than 

 would be compatable with the evidences afforded by the remains 

 discovered in the caves. 



All the stone implements are axe or chisel pointed, not one 

 single spear pointed implement has ever been found. The 

 second division of the stone age is divided from the first by the 

 introduction of axe pointed implements and all the important 

 advances that are indicaced by the use of this type of tool. If 

 the cave people had been acquainted with the use of stone, they 

 would almost certainly have employed spear pointed implements 

 of the rudest kind ; as when they advanced as far as the 

 making of chisel and axe pointed tools they would have been 

 able to build houses and be independent of the shelter of caves, 

 and have been in a position to cultivate the soil and raise food, 

 instead of having to subsist on shell -fish and the animals of the 

 jungle. The multiplicity of the types of stone implements 

 found in Perak shews that the users of them must have been 

 comparatively in a high state of civilization. The remarkable 

 absence of all palaeolithic patterns may be explained by 

 supposing that there never was a period in this part when the 

 ruder implements were in use, but that the people, whoever they 

 wei'e who employed them, were settlers from some other locality, 

 who on arrival had reached the second stage of the stone age. 

 There is, of necessity, no means of fixing even in the most ap- 

 proximate manner the date of the introduction of the use of 

 stone in Perak, but the similarity of the types of the implements 

 is quite sufficient to indicate that it was a continuation of the 

 same wave of progress which led to the evolution of these tools 

 in other countries. This is, of course, far from saying that the 

 stone age in Malaya was contemporaneous with that of Europe. 

 The number of the stone implements is, however, as striking 

 here as in other parts of the world, pointing indubitably to the 

 long continuance of the use of these lithic tools. 



The finding of a few implements in the cave deposits 

 would by no means prove that the inhabitants were the makers 

 of them, but only that they were of the same age. For it would 

 be quite likely that were two races of different degrees of 

 advancement living in the country at the same time that the 

 lower might acquire, either by barter or other means, the 

 weapons of the higher race, in the same as the wild tribes now 

 use iron axes, pottery, clothes and other things bought from the 



