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DEVELOrMENT OF THE HUMAN EACE. 



287 



called. So far as California is concerned, the evidence all points in this 

 direction. The implements, tools, and works of art obtained are throughout 

 in harmony with each other, all being the simplest and least artistic of which 

 it is possible to conceive. Whether found in the strata under the basaltic 

 lava,, or above, at any point or depth in the detritus, we always recognize the 



■ 



same type. 



There is nothing about either the remains of man or his works which 

 indicates anything different from what we find in other parts of the world 

 wherever the lowest stratum of humanity has been reached, or essentially 

 different from what is now existing in California itself. Hence we may 

 quote Huxley's statement in regard to the Engis and Neanderthal skulls, 

 and, introducing the necessary modification demanded by the Californian 

 discoveries, say that the advocates of progressive development must look 

 farther back than the Pliocene (if that be the correct term to apply to 

 the strata underlying the basalt) for traces of the primordial stock. 



It is evident that there has been no unfolding of the intellectual faculties 

 of the human race on this continent which can be parallelized with that 

 which has taken place in Central Europe. We can recognize no palaeolithic, 

 neolithic, bronze, or iron ages. Over most of the continent man cannot, as 

 it seems to the writer, be considered as having made any essential progress 

 towards civilization. What the exact relations of the intellectual develop- 

 ment of the Central and some of the South American peoples, to our civiliza- 

 tion are, it is not easy to understand. At present our stock of information is 

 so scanty that generalizations cannot be too cautiously drawn. 



The steps of progress in Central Europe which are indicated by the suc- 

 cessive use, first of more artistic stone implements, then of bronze and after- 

 wards of iron, have no parallel on this continent, The use of copper tools in 

 the Mississippi Valley does not, as the writer believes, indicate any consider- 

 able progress in intellectual development, for the copper at first may have 

 been picked up from the surface in the native form, and to fashion it into 

 rude tools required but little more skill than is indicated by the chipped 

 obsidian implements wdiich are now, and have been from all time, in use 

 among the aborigines of this continent. The mining work executed in the 



search for copper, after the supply from the surface had been exhausted, 

 proves the existence of an inexhaustible amount of patience, but nothing 

 Uke the ingenuity and development of brain which the fabrication of bronze 

 would imply. 





