191 



CHAPTER VIII. 



THE STONE AQE— PAST AND PEESENT. 



The Stone Age is that period in tlie Listory of mankind during 

 whicli stone is habitually used as a material for weapons and 

 tools. Antiquaries find it convenient to make the Stone Age 

 cease whenever metal implements come into common use, and 

 the Bronze Age, or the Iron Age, supervenes. But the last 

 traces of a Stone Age are hardly known to disappear anywhere, 

 in spite of the general use of metals ; and in studying this 

 phase of the world's history for itself, it may be considered as 

 still existing, not only among savages who have not fairly come 

 to the use of iron, but even among civilized nations. Wher- 

 ever the use of stone instruments, as they were used in the 

 Stone Age proper, is to be found, there the Stone Age has not 

 entirely passed away. The stone hammers with which tinkers 

 might be found at work till lately in remote districts in Ire- 

 land,^ the huge stone mallets with wooden handles which are 

 still used in Iceland for di-iving posts and other heavy hammer- 

 ing,^ and the lancets of obsidian with which the Indians of 

 Mexico still bleed themselves, as their fathers used to do before 

 the Spanish Conquest,^ are stone implements which have sur- 

 vived for centuries the general introduction of iron. 



Mere natural stones, picked up and used without any arti- 

 ficial shaping at all, are implements of a very low order. Such 



» WUde, Cat. ofMus. of E. I. Acad, ; Dublin, 1857, p. 80. 

 * Klemm, ' Allgemeine Culturwissenschaft ;' Leipzig & Sondershausen, 1855-8, 

 part ii. p. 86. ' Brasseur, ' Mexique,' vol. iii. p. 640» 



